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THE GLORY OF THE COMING 



BY IRVIN S. COBB 



FICTION 

Those Times and These 

Local Color 

Old Judge Priest 

FiBBLE, D. D. 

Back Home 

The Escape of Mr. Trimm 

The Thunders of Silence 

WIT AND HUMOR 

"Speaking of Operations- 
Europe Revised 
Roughing It De Luxe 
Cobb's Bill of Fare 
Cobb's Anatomy 

MISCELLANY 

The Glory of the Coming 
Paths of Glory 
"Speaking of Prussians — 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



[ THE GLORY OF 
THE COMING / 

WHAT MINE EYES HAVE SEEN OF AMERICANS 

IN ACTION IN THIS YEAR OF GRACE 

AND ALLIED ENDEAVOR 



IRVIN S. gOBB 

AUTHOR OF "BACK HOME," 

"OLD JUDGE PRIEST." 

ETC., ETC. 




NEW Xal^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



Ocrj^^ c^ 



1> 






COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
BT GEOBGB H. DOBAN COMPANT 



COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA 

DEC IS 1918'' X 

©Ci.A506941^' ^- 



TO 

GEORGE H. BURR, Esquire 



"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 

stored; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. 

His Truth is marching on." 

— Battle Hymn of the Republic 



FOREWORD 



This book is made up of articles written 
abroad in the spring and summer of 1918 and 
cabled or mailed back for publication at home. 
For convenience in arrangement, a few of these 
papers have been broken up into sectional sub- 
divisions with new chapter headings inserted; 
otherwise the matter is here presented practic- 
ally in its original form. 

It has been given to the writer to behold 
widely dissimilar aspects of the Great War. 
As a neutral observer, hailing from a neutral 
country, I was a witness, in Belgium, in north- 
ern France, in Germany and in England, to 
some of its first stages. That was back in 1914 
when I was for awhile with the British, then for 
a period with the Belgian forces afield, then for 
a much longer period with the German armies 
and finally with the British again. I was of like 
mind then with all my professional brethren serv- 
ing publications in non-belligerent countries, ex- 
cepting one or two or three of a more discerning 
vision than the rest. Behind the perfection of 
the German fighting machine I did not see the 
hideous malignant brutality which was there, 
[ix] 



FOREWORD 



In the first half of this present year, as a 
partisan on the side of my country and its fed- 
erated associates, I visited England and for a 
space of months travelled about over France, 
with two incursions into that small corner of 
Flanders which at this time remained in the 
hands of the Allies. 

I have seen the Glory of the Coming. I 
have watched the American Expeditionary 
Force grow from a small thing into a mighty 
thing — the mightiest thing, I veritably believe, 
that since conscious time began, has been un- 
dertaken by a free people entering upon a war 
V on foreign shores with nothing personally to 

gain except a principle, with nothing to main- 
tain except honour, with nothing to keep ex- 
cept their national self-respect. In this war 
our only spoils out of the victory will be the 
establishment of the rights of other peoples to 
rule themselves, our only territorial enlarge- 
ments will be the graves where our fallen dead 
sleep on alien soil, our only tangible reward for 
all that we are giving in blood and treasure and 
effort and self-denial, will be the knowledge 
that in a world crisis, when the liberties of the 
world were imperilled, we, as a world-power 
and as perhaps the most conspicuous example 
in the world, of a democracy, did our duty by 
ourselves, by our republican neighbours over- 
seas and by our children and their children and 
their children's children. 

No longer ago than last March, it was a 
[x] 



FOREWORD 



small thing we had done, as viewed in the light 
of our then visible performances in France and 
an even smaller thing as viewed in the light of 
what our public men, many of them, and our 
newspapers, some of them, had promised on 
our behalf nearly a year earlier when we came 
into the war. At the beginning there was an 
army to be created; there was a navy to be 
built up; there was a continent to be crossed 
and an ocean to be traversed if we meant to 
link up all the States of our Union with all our 
plans; there was a military establishment to 
be started from the grass roots; there were 
ninety millions of us to be set from the ways of 
peace into the ways of war. But because some 
of our politicians professed to believe that by 
virtue of our resources, our energy and our so- 
called business efficiency we could do the im- 
possible in an impossibly brief time, and more 
especially because, among the masses of Con- 
tinental Europe there was a tendency to look 
upon us as a race of miracle-workers living in a 
magic-land and accomplishing unutterable won- 
ders at will, and finally because these same 
masses accepted the words of our self-appoint- 
ed, self-anointed prophets as they might accept 
Gospel-writ, a profound disappointment over 
the seeming failure of America to produce her 
legions on European soil, followed hard upon 
tile exaltation which had prevailed among our 
Allies immediately after we broke with the 
common enemy of mankind. In France I know 
[xi] 



FOREWORD 



this to have been true; in other countries I have 
reason to believe it was true. As month after 
month passed until nearly a twelvemonth had 
gone by and still the armed millions from Amer- 
ica did not materialise, I think it only natural 
and inevitable that, behind their hands and 
under their breaths, the Poilus called our sol- 
diers "Boy Scouts" and spoke of our effort as 
"The Second Children's Crusade." For thanks 
be to a few men among us who worked with 
their mouths rather than with their hands, the 
French populace had been led to expect so very 
much of us in so short a space of time and yet 
there now was presented before their eyes, so 
very little as the tangible proofs of our voiced 
determination to offer all that we had and all 
that we were, in the fight for decency and for 
humanity. 

Do you remember when, on or about the be- 
ginning of the last week of March, General 
Pershing offered to the Allied command the 
available mobile strength of the army under 
him, for service to aid the British, the French, 
the Belgians and the Portuguese in stemming 
the great German offensive which had been 
launched on the twenty -first day of that month .^^ 
Pershing made the offer in all good faith and in 
all good faith it was accepted. But at that 
moment all he could spare out of the trenches 
and send across France from the East to the 
West to go into the line in threatened Picardy 
was one division of considerably less than forty 
[xii] 



FOREWORD 



thousand men; a puny handful as they measure 
fighting forces these times; and that division 
was stayed in part on French rations, equipped 
in part with borrowed French ordnance and 
provided in large part with French munitions. 
Without French aid it probably could not have 
gone forward at all; without French aid it 
could not have maintained itself after it had 
taken over the Normandy sectors to which 
Foch assigned it. It was not the fault of our 
military leaders abroad, perhaps it was not the 
fault of our people at home that, fifty weeks 
after entering the war, we were able to render 
only so small a share of immediate help in this 
most critical juncture of the entire war. But 
it was the fault of those who had boasted, those 
who had bragged, those who had preached at 
home what they did not practice, that the 
French people were beginning to think — and 
to whisper — that the United States had failed 
to live up to its pledges. These people had no 
way of knowing what we were accomplishing 
over here; they must judge by what they might 
see for themselves over there. 

The great awakening came, though, before 
the first of June. Over-night, it almost seemed, 
our army began to function as an army. The 
sea became alive with our transports, the land 
became alive with our troops. Instead of two 
hundred and some odd thousands of men on 
French soil, we had half a million, then a mil- 
lion, then a million and a half. No longer were 
[ xiii ] 



FOREWORD 



our forces without tanks of American manu- 
facture, without machine-guns of American 
manufacture, without a proper and adequate 
equipment of heavy guns of American manu- 
facture. There was even hope that our aero- 
plane production, up until then the most ghast- 
ly and pitiable failure of all, might by autumn, 
begin to measure up, in some degree at least, to 
the sanguine press-notices of the year before — 
1917. We who in France could see the growth 
of this thing came to feel that perhaps all of 
our dollar-a-year commercial giants were not 
being grossly overpaid and we came proudly to 
realise that our country now was responding 
with all its strength to the responsibilities it 
had assumed < The Yanks were no longer on 
the way; they were here — ^here in number suf- 
ficient to enable us to lend a strong and ever- 
strengthening hand in the turning-back of the 
enemy and in bringing closer the certainty of 
a complete triumph over him. It was the 
Glory of the Coming. Moreover it should not 
be forgotten in the reckoning-up of causes and 
results that the lodging of the allied command 
in the hands of one captain — the most power- 
ful single factor in inspiring victory — was 
brought about largely through American in- 
sistence upon the election of a single leader 
and a unified leadership for all the forces of the 
confederated nations in the field of the western 
theatre of the war. 

I sometimes think the most splendid thing I 
[xiv ] 



FOREWORD 



have seen in this war was not some individual 
act of heroism, or devotion, or resolution — 
glorious though it may have been. I sometimes 
think the most splendid thing I have seen was 
the making-over of nations, literally before my 
eyes, in the fiery furnace of this war. I have 
seen little Belgium wearing the marks of her 
transcendent sacrifice and her unutterable suf- 
fering, as the Redeemer of Man wore the nail- 
marks of His Crucifixion; I have seen Britain 
transformed from the fat, contented, slothful, 
old grandmother of the nations, sitting by the 
chimney-piece and feeding herself torpid on her 
plenty, into the militant Britain of yore that 
has put so many millions of her sons into khaki 
and so many of the ladies of Germany into 
mourning; I have seen France become an in- 
comparably glorious model, before all the world 
for all time, of the heights to which a free peo- 
ple may rise in defence of national pledges, 
national integrity and national existence; and I 
have seen my own country taking her proper 
place, in the most desperate emergency that 
ever confronted civilisation, as a people united, 
determined, valiant and steadfast — the spirit 
of the New World binding herself with steel , 
grapples to the best that is in the Old Worl4>,^ 
and inevitably taking the first steps in the 
long-delayed campaign of understanding and 
conciliation and renewed affection with our 
kinspeople and our brethren of the British Isles 
who speak the same mother-tongue which we 
[xv]. 



FOREWORD 



speak and with whom we are joint inheritors of 
Runnymede and Agincourt. 

As I write these lines, victory appears to be 
very near. Seemingly, it is coming one year 
sooner than we, who were in France and Bel- 
gium in the first months of 1918, thought it 
would come. And speaking for my fellow- 
American correspondents as well as for myself, 
I make so bold as to say that all of us are de- 
voutly hopeful that our leaders will make it a 
complete, not a conditional victory. For sure- 
ly those who are without mercy themselves 
cannot appreciate and do not deserve mercy 
from others. To our way of thinking, the van- 
quished must be made to drink the cup of de- 
feat to its bitterest lees, not because of any 
vengeful desire on our part to inflict unneces- 
sary punishment and humiliation upon him, 
but because he who had no other argument than 
force, can be cured of his madness only by 
force. We who have seen what he has wrought 
by the work of his hands among his helpless 
victims in other lands believe this with all our 
hearts. 

I. s. c. 

New York, November, 1918. 



1 2£vi ]; 



CONTENTS 



CHAFTEB 



PAGE 



I When the Sea-Asp Stings 21 

II "AllAmurikin — Out TO THEM Wires" ... 36 

III Hell's Fire for the Huns 58 

IV On THE Threshold OP Battle . . . . .' 82 
V Setting a Trap for Opportunity .... 98 

VI Through the Battle's Front Door .... 102 

VII At the Front of the Front 114 

VIII A Bridge and an Automobile Tibe .... 129 

IX Aces Up! 139 

X Happy Landings 152 

XI Trench Essence 164 

XII Being Bombed and Re-Bombed 195 

XIII London Under Raid-Punishment .... 210 

XIV The Day of Big Bertha 217 

XV Wanted: A Fool-Proof War 235 

XVI Conducting War by Delegation .... 265 

XVII Young Black Joe 270 

XVIII "Let's Go!" 298 

XIX War AS It Isn't 308 

XX The Call of the Cuckoo 330 

XXI Paradoxes Behind the Lines 345 

XXII The Tail OF the Snake 354 

XXIII Bricks Without Straw 375 

XXIV Fbom Mt Overseas Note-Book _398 

[xvii] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 



CHAPTER I 
WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 



BECAUSE she was camouflaged with 
streaky marks and motthngs into the 
likeness of a painted Jezebel of the seas, 
because she rode high out of the water, 
and wallowed as she rode, because during all 
those days of our crossing she hugged up close 
to our ship, splashing through the foam of our 
wake as though craving the comfort of our 
company, we called her things no self-respect- 
ing ship should have to bear. But when that 
night, we stood on the afterdeck of our ship, 
we running away as fast as our kicking screw 
would take us, and saw her going down, taking 
American soldier boys to death with her in 
alien waters, we drank toasts standing up to 
the poor old Tuscania. 

I was one of those who were in at the death 
of the Tuscania. Her sinking was the climax 
of the most memorable voyage I ever expect 
to take. Five days have elapsed since she was 
torpedoed, and even though these words are 
being cabled across from London to the home 

[21] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

side of the ocean, at least three weeks more 
must elapse before they can see printer's ink. 
So to some this will seem an old story; but 
the memory of what happened that night off 
the Irish coast is going to abide with me while 
I live. It was one of those big moments in a 
man's life that stick in a man's brain as long 
as he has a brain to think with. 

Transatlantic journeys these days aren't 
what they used to be before America went 
into the war. Ours began to be different even 
before our ship pulled out from port. It is 
forbidden me now to tell her name, and anyhow 
her name doesn't in the least matter, but she 
was a big ship with a famous skipper, and in 
peacetimes her sailing would have made some 
small stir. There would have been crowds of 
relations and friends at the pier bidding fare- 
well to departing travellers ; and steamer baskets 
and steamer boxes would have been coming 
aboard in streams. Beforehand there would 
have been a pleasant and mildly exciting 
bustle, and as we drew away from the dock 
and headed out into midstream and down the 
river for our long hike overseas, the pierhead 
would have been alive with waving handker- 
chiefs, and all our decks would have been 
fringed with voyagers shouting back farewells 
to those they had left behind them. Instead 
we slipped away almost as if we had done 
something wrong. There was no waving of 
hands and handkerchiefs, no good-byes on the 

[22] 



WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 

gang-planks, no rush to get back on land when 
the shore bell sounded. To reach the dock we 
passed through trochas of barbed-wire en- 
tanglements, past sentries standing with fixed 
bayonets at entryways. When we got inside 
the pier our people bade us farewell at a guarded 
gate. None but travellers whose passports 
read straight were allowed beyond that point. 
So alone and unescorted each one of us went 
soberly up the side of the ship, and then sun- 
dry hours later our journey began, as the ship, 
like a big grey ghost, slid away from land, as 
quietly as might be, into the congenial grey 
fog which instantly swallowed her up and left 
her in a little grey world of sea mist that was 
all her own. After this fashion, then, we 
started. 

As for the first legs of the trip they were 
much like the first legs of almost any sea trip 
except that we travelled in a convoy with sun- 
dry other ships, with warcraft to guard us on 
our way. Our ship was quite full of soldiers — 
officers in the first cabin, and the steerage 
packed with khakied troopers — ninety per cent 
of whom had never smelled bilge water before 
they embarked upon their great adventure 
overseas. There were fewer civilians than one 
formerly might have found on a ship bound 
for Europe. In these times only those civilians 
who have urgent business in foreign climes 
venture to go abroad. 

I sat at the purser's table. His table was 

[23] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

fairly typical of the ship's personnel. With 
me there sat, of course, the purser, likewise 
two Canadian officers, two members of ' a 
British Commission returning from America, 
and an Irish brewer. There were not very 
many women on our passenger list. Of these 
women half a dozen or so were professional 
nurses, and two were pretty Canadian girls 
bound for England to be married on arrival 
there to young Canadian officers. There were 
only three children on board, and they were 
travelling with their parents in the second 
class. 

Except for a touch of seriousness about the 
daily lifeboat drill, and except that regimental 
discipline went forward, with the troops drill- 
ing on the open deck spaces when the weather 
and the sea permitted, there was at first noth- 
ing about this voyage to distinguish it from 
any other midwinter voyage. Strangers got 
acquainted one with another and swapped 
views on politics, religion, symptoms and Ger- 
mans; flirtations started and ripened furiously; 
concerts were organized and took place, proving 
to be what concerts at sea usually are. Twice 
a day the regimental band played, and once a 
day, up on the bridge, the second officer took 
the sun, squinting into his sextant with the 
deep absorption with which in happier times a 
certain type of tourist was wont to stare through 
an enlarging device at a certain type of Parisian 
photograph. At night, though, we were in a 
[24] 



WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 

darkened ship, a gliding black shape upon 
black waters, with heavy shades over all the 
portholes and thick draperies over all the 
doors, and only dim lights burning in the 
passageways and cross halls, so that every odd 
corner on deck or within was as dark as a coal 
pocket. It took some time to get used to being 
in the state in which Moses was when the light 
went out; but then, we had time to get used 
to it, believe me! Ocean travel is slower these 
days, for obvious reasons. Personally, I re- 
tired from the ship's society during three days 
of the first week of the trip. I missed only 
two meals, missing them, I may add, shortly 
after having eaten them; but at the same time 
I felt safer in my berth than up on deck — not 
happier, particularly, but safer. The man who 
first said that you can't eat your cake and 
have it too had such cases as mine in mind, I 
am sure of that. I can't and I don't — at least 
not when I am taking an ocean voyage. I 
have been seasick on many waters, and I have 
never learned to care for the sensation yet. 

When I emerged from semiretirement it was 
to learn that we had reached the so-called dan- 
ger zone. The escort of warcraft for our 
transport had been augmented. Under orders 
the military men wore their life jackets, and 
during all their waking hours they went about 
with cork flaps hugging them about their 
necks fore and aft, so that they rather suggested 
Chinese malefactors with their heads incased 

[25] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

in punishment casques. By request the civilian 
passengers were expected to carry their life 
preservers with them wherever they went; but 
some of them forgot the injunction. I know I 
did frequently. Also, a good many of them 
turned in at night with most of their outer 
clothing on their bodies; but I followed the old 
Southern custom and took most of mine off 
before going to bed. 

Our captain no longer came to the saloon 
for his meals. He lived upon the bridge — ate 
there and, I think, slept there too — what 
sleeping he did. Standing there all muffled in 
his oilskins he looked even more of a squatty 
and unheroic figure than he had in his naval 
blue presiding at the head of the table; but 
by repute we knew him for a man who had 
gone through one torpedoing with great credit 
to himself and through numbers of narrow es- 
capes, and we valued him accordingly and put 
our faith in him. It was faith well placed, as 
shall presently transpire. 

I should not say that there was much fear 
aboard; at least if there was it did not mani- 
fest itself in the manner or the voice or the 
behaviour of a single passenger seen by me; 
but there was a sort of nagging, persistent sense 
of uneasiness betraying itself in various small 
ways. For one thing, all of us made more 
jokes about submarines, mines and other perils 
of the deep than was natural. There was 
something a little forced, artificial, about this 
[26] 



WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 

gaiety — the laughs came from the lips, but 
not from points farther south. 

We knew by hearsay that the Tuscania was 
a troopship bearing some of our soldiers over 
to do their share of the job of again making 
this world a fit place for human beings to live 
in. There was something pathetic in the 
fashion after which she so persistently and 
constantly strove to stick as closely under our 
stern as safety and the big waves would permit. 
It was as though her skipper placed all reliance 
in our skipper, looking to him to lead his ship 
out of peril should peril befall. Therefore, we 
of our little group watched her from our after- 
decks, with her sharp nose forever half or 
wholly buried in the creaming white smother 
we kicked up behind us. 

It was a crisp bright February day when we 
neared the coasts of the British Empire. At 
two o'clock in the afternoon we passed, some 
hundreds of yards to starboard, a round, dark, 
bobbing object which some observers thought 
was a floating mine. Others thought it might 
be the head and shoulders of a human body 
held upright in a life ring. Whatever it was, 
our ship gave it a wide berth, sheering off 
from the object in a sharp swing. Almost at 
the same moment upon our other bow, at a 
distance of not more than one hundred yards 
from the crooked course we were then pur- 
suing, there appeared out through one of the 
swells a lifeboat, oarless, abandoned, empty, 
[27] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

except for what looked like a woman's cloak 
lying across the thwarts. Rising and falling to 
the swing of the sea it drifted down alongside 
of us so that we could look almost straight 
down into it. We did not stop to investigate 
but kept going, zigzagging as we went, and that 
old painted-up copy cat of a Tuscania came 
zigzagging behind us. A good many persons 
decided to tie on their life preservers. 

Winter twilight was drawing on when we 
sighted land — Northern Ireland it was. The 
wind was going down with the sun and the 
sharp crests of the waves were dulling off, and 
blunt oily rollers began to splash with greasy 
sounds against our plates. Far away some- 
where we saw the revolving light of a light- 
house winking across the face of the waters 
like a drunken eye. That little beam coming 
and going gave me a feeling of security. I 
was one of a party of six who went below to 
the stateroom of a member of the group for 
a farewell card game. 

Perhaps an hour later, as we sat there each 
intently engaged upon the favoured indoor 
American sport of trying to better two pairs, 
we heard against our side of the ship a queer 
knocking sound rapidly repeated — a, sound 
that somehow suggested a boy dragging a 
stick along a picket fence. 

"I suppose that's a torpedo rapping for admis- 
sion," said one of us, looking up from his cards 
and listening with a cheerful grin on his face. 

[28] 



WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 

I think it was not more thian five minutes 
after that when an American oflS^cer opened the 
stateroom door and poked his head in. 

"Better come along, you fellows," he said; 
"but come quietly so as not to give alarm or 
frighten any of the women. Something has 
happened. It's the Tuscania — she's in trouble !" 

Up we got and hurried aft down the decks, 
each one taking with him his cork jacket and 
adjusting it over his shoulders as he went. We 
came to the edge of the promenade deck aft. 
There were not many persons there, as well 
as we could tell in the thick darkness through 
which we felt our way, and not many more 
came afterward — in all I should say not more 
than seventy-five. 

All the rest were in ignorance of what had 
occurred — a good many were at dinner. Ac- 
counts of the disaster which I have read since 
my arrival in London said that the torpedo 
from the U-boat thudded into the vitals of the 
Tuscania, disarranged her engines, and left her 
in utter darkness for a while until her crew 
could switch on the auxiliary dynamo. I think 
this must have been a mistake, for at the 
moment of our reaching the deck of our ship 
the Tuscania was lighted up all over. Her 
illumination seemed especially brilliant, but 
that, I suppose, was largely because we had 
become accustomed to seeing our fellow trans- 
ports as dark bulks at night. I should say she 
was not more than a mile from us, almost 
[29] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

diie aft and a trifle to the left. But the dis- 
tance between us visibly increased each passing 
momejit, for we were running away from her 
as fast as our engines could drive us. We 
could feel our ship throb under our feet as she 
picked up speed. It made us feel like cowards. 
Near at hand a ship was in distress, a ship 
laden with a precious freightage of American 
soldier boys, and here were we legging it like 
a frightened rabbit, weaving in and out on 
sharp tacks. 

We knew, of course, that we were under or- 
ders to get safely away if we could in case, one 
of those sea adders, the submarines, should 
attack our convoy. We knew that guardian 
destroyers would even now be hurrying to the 
rescue, and we knew land was not many miles 
away; but all the same, I think I never felt 
such an object of shame as I felt that first 
moment when the realisation dawned on me 
that we were fleeing from a stricken vessel 
instead of hastening back to give what succour 
we could. 

As I stood there in the darkness, with silent, 
indistinct shapes all about me, it came upon 
me with almost the shock of a physical blow 
that the rows of lights I saw yonder through 
the murk were all slanting slightly downward 
toward what would be the bow of the disabled 
steamer. These oblique lines of light told the 
story. The Tuscania had been struck forward 
and was settling by the head. 
[30] 



WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 

Suddenly a little subdued "Ah! Ah!" burst 
like a chorus from us all. A red rocket — a 
rocket as red as blood — sprang up high into 
the air above those rows of lights. It hung 
aloft for a moment, then burst into a score 
of red balls, which fell, dimming out as they 
descended. After a bit two more rockets fol- 
lowed in rapid succession. I always thought 
a rocket to be a beautiful thing. Probably 
this belief is a heritage from that time in my 
boyhood when first I saw Fourth-of-July fire- 
works. But never again will a red rocket fired 
at night be to me anything except a reminder 
of the most pitiable, the most heart-racking 
thing I have ever seen — that poor appeal for 
help from the sinking Tuscania flaming against 
that foreign sky. 

There was silence among us as we watched. 
None of us, I take it, had words within him to 
express what he felt; so we said nothing at all, 
but just stared out across the waters until our 
eyeballs ached in their sockets. So quiet were 
we that I jumped when right at my elbow a 
low, steady voice spoke. Turning my head I 
could make out that the speaker was one of 
the younger American officers. 

"If what I heard before we sailed is true," he 
said, "my brother is in the outfit on that 
boat yonder. Well, if they get him it will 
only add a little more interest to the debt I 
already owe those damned Germans." 

That was all he said, and to it I made no 

[31] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

answer, for there was no answer to be made. 
Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, then 
twenty-five. Now instead of many small 
lights we could make out only a few faint pin 
pricks of light against the blackness to mark 
the spot where the foundering vessel must be. 
Presently we could distinguish but one speck 
of light. Alongside this one special gleam a 
red glow suddenly appeared — not a rocket this 
time, but a flare, undoubtedly. Together the 
two lights — the steady white one and the 
spreading red one — descended and together 
were extinguished. Without being told we 
knew, all of us — ^landsmen and seamen alike — 
what we had seen. We had seen the last of 
that poor ship, stung to death by a Hunnish 
sea-asp. 

Still silent, we went below. Those of us 
who had not yet dined went and dined. Very 
solemnly, like men performing a rite, we or- 
dered wine and we drank to the Tuscania and 
her British crew and her living cargo of Amer- 
ican soldiers. 

' Next morning, after a night during which 
perilous things happened about us that may 
not be described here and now, we came out 
of our perils and into safety at an English port, 
and there it was that we heard what made us 
ask God to bless that valorous, vigilant little 
pot-bellied skipper of ours, may he live for- 
ever! We were told that the torpedo which 
pierced the Tuscania was meant for us, that 

[32] 



WHEN THE SEA-ASP STINGS 

the U-boat rising unseen in the twilight fired 
it at US, and that our captain up on the bridge 
saw it coming when it was yet some way off, 
and swinging the ship hard over to one side, 
dodged the flittering devil-thing by a margin 
that can be measured literally in inches. The 
call was a close one. The torpedo, it was said, 
actually grazed the plates of our vessel — it 
was that we heard as we sat at cards — and 
passing aft struck the bow of the Tuscania as 
she swung along not two hundred yards be- 
hind us. We heard, too, that twice within the 
next hour torpedoes were fired at us, and again 
a fourth one early in the hours of the morning. 
Each time chance or poor aim or sharp sea- 
manship or a combination of all three saved 
us. We were lucky. For of the twelve ships 
in our transport two, including the Tuscania, 
were destroyed and two others, making four 
in all, were damaged by torpedoes before 
morning. 

Next day, in London, I read that not a man 
aboard the Tuscania, whether sailor or soldier, 
showed weakness or fright. I read how those 
Yankee boys, many of them at sea for the 
first time in their lives, stood in ranks waiting 
for rescue or for death while the ship listed and 
yawed and settled under them; how the British 
sang "God Save the King," and the Americans 
sang to the same good Allied air, "My Country, 
'Tis of Thee;" and how at last, descending over 
the side, some of them to be drowned but more 
[33] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of them to be saved, those American lads of 
ours sang what before then had been a mean- 
ingless, trivial jingle, but which is destined 
forevermore, I think, to mean a great deal to 
Americans. Perry said: "We have met the 
enemy, and they are ours." Lawrence said: 
"Don't give up the ship!" Farragut said: 
"Damn the torpedoes, go ahead." Dewey said: 
"You may fire, Gridley, when you are ready." 
Our history is full of splendid sea slogans, but 
I think there can never be a more splendid one 
that we Americans will cherish than the first 
line, which is also the title of the song now 
suddenly freighted with a meaning and a mes- 
sage to American hearts, which our boys sang 
that black February night in the Irish Sea 
when two hundred of them, first fruits of our 
national sacrifice in this war, went over the 
sides of the Tuscania to death: "Where do we 
go from here, boys; where do we go from here.?" 



[34] 



CHAPTER II 

'ALL AMURIKIN— OUT TO THEM 
WIRES" 



H 



E was curled up in a moist-mud 
cozy corner. His curved back fitted 
into a depression in the clay. His 
feet rested comfortably in an ankle- 
deep solution, very puttylike in its consistency, 
and compounded of the rains of heaven and the 
alluvials of France. His face was incredibly 
dirty, and the same might have been said for 
his hands. He had big buck teeth and sandy 
hair and a nice round inquisitive blue eye. 
His rifle, in good order, was balanced across 
his hunched knees. One end of a cigarette 
was pasted fast to his lower lip; the other end 
spilled tiny sparks down the front of his 
blouse. 

Offhand you would figure his age to be half- 
past nineteen. Just round the corner from 
him a machine gun at intervals spoke in stut- 
tering accents. At more frequent intervals 
from somewhere up or down the line a rifle 
whanged where an ambitious amateur Yankee 

[35] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

sniper tried for a professional and doubtlessly 
a bored German sniper across the way; or where 
the German tried back. 

The youth in the cozy corner paid small heed. 
He was supposed to be getting his baptism of 
fire. In reality he was reading a two-months- 
old copy of a certain daily paper printed in a 
certain small city in a certain Middle Western 
state — to wit, the sovereign state of Ohio. He 
belonged to a volunteer regiment, and in a larger 
sense to the Rainbow Division. This was his 
first day in the front-line trenches and already 
he was as much at home there as though he 
had been cradled to the lullaby of those big 
guns grunting away in the distance. For a 
fact he was at home — reading home news out 
of the home paper and, as one might say, not 
caring a single dern whatsoever. 

"Say, Tobe," he called in the husky half 
voice which is the prescribed and conventional 
conversational tone on the forward edges of 
No Man's Land; "Tobe, lissen!" 

His mate, leaning against the slanted side 
of the trench ten feet away, blowing little 
smoke wisps up toward the pale-blue sky above 
him, half turned his head to answer. 

"WeU, what?" 

"Whatter you know about this.'' It says 
here the New York Yanks is liable to buy Ty 
Cobb off of Detroit. Say, what'U them Detroits 
do without old Ty in there bustin' the fast ones 
on the nose, huh .5^" 

[36] 



^_ 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

"With all the money they'll get for that guy 
they should worry!" 

The emphatic ker-blim of a rifle a hundred 
yards off furnished a vocal exclamation point 
to further accent the comment. 

The reader shifted himself slightly in his 
scooped niche and turned over to another 
page. He was just the average kid private, 
but to me he was as typical as type can be. 
I figured him as a somewhat primitive, highly 
elemental creature, adaptable and simple- 
minded; appallingly green yet at this present 
trade, capable though of becoming amazingly 
competent at it if given experience and a 
chance; temperamentally gaited to do heroic 
things without any of the theatricalism of 
planned heroics — in short and in fine, the in- 
carnated youthful spirit of the youthful land 
which bore him. 

I came upon him with his cigarette and his 
favourite daily and his mud-boltered feet at 
the tail end of a trip along the front line of a 
segment of a sector held by our troops, and 
before I made his acquaintance sundry things 
befel. I had been in trenches before, but they 
were German trenches along the Aisne in the 
fall of the first year of this war business, and 
these trenches of our own people were quite 
different from those of 1914. French minds 
had devised them, with their queer twists and 
windings, which seem so crazy and yet are so 
sanely ordained; and French hands had dug 
[37] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

them out of the chalky soil and shored them 
up with timbers, but now Americans had taken 
them over and, in common with all things 
that Americans take over, they had become as 
much and as thoroughly American as though 
they had been Subway diggings in New York 
City, which indeed they rather resembled; or 
excavations for the foundations of the new 
Carnegie Library in Gallipolis. 'Tis a way our 
folks have. It may be a good way or a bad 
way — since I came over here I think the 
French neither understand it nor care deeply 
for it — but all the same it is our way. 

At the beginning we quit a wrecked town that 
was a regimental headquarters. Its present 
population was all military, French and Amer- 
ican. The villagers who had once lived there 
were gone to the last one of them, and had been 
gone for years probably. But more than by the 
shattered stone walls, or by the breached and 
empty church with its spire shorn away, or by 
the tiled roofs which were roofs no longer but 
sieves and colanders, its altered character was 
set forth and proved by the absence of any 
manure heaps against the house fronts. In 
this part of the world communal prosperity is 
measured, I think, by the size and richness of 
the manure heap. It is kept alongside the 
homes and daily it is turned over with spades 
• and tormented with pitchforks, against the time 
when it is carried forth to be spread upon the 
tiny farm a mile or so away. The rank ammo- 

[38] 



"all AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

niacal smell of the precious fertilizer which 
keeps the land rich is the surest information 
to the nose of the approaching traveller that 
thrifty folk abide in the hamlet he is about 
entering. 

But this town smelled only of dust and 
decay and the peculiar odour of rough-cast 
plastering which has been churned by wheels 
and hoofs and feet into a fine white silt like 
powdered pumice, coating everything and every- 
body in sight when the weather is dry, and when 
the weather is wet turning into a slick and slimy 
paste underfoot. 

We came out of a colonel's billet in a narrow- 
shouldered old two-story house, my companion 
and I; and crossing the little square we passed 
through what once upon a time had been the 
front wall of the principal building in the 
place. The front wall still stood and the door- 
way was unscarred, but both were like parts 
of sta-ge settings, for beyond them was nothing 
at all save nothingness — ^messed-about heaps of 
crumbled masonry and broken shards of tiling. 
From the inner side one might look through 
the doorway, as though it had been a frame 
for a picture, and see a fine scape beyond of 
marshland and winding road and mounting 
hills with pine trees growing in isolated groups 
like the dumpings in a gentleman's park. 

In what had been the garden behind the 
principal house the colonel's automobile was 
waiting. We climbed into it and rode for up- 

[39] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

ward of a mile along a seamed and rutted 
highway that wound up and over the abbre- 
viated mountain of which we held one side and 
the Germans the other. For the preceding 
three days there had been a faint smell of 
spring in the air; now there was a taste of it. 
One might say that spring no longer was coming 
but had actually come. The rushes which 
grew in low places were showing green near 
their roots and the switchy limbs of the pollard 
willows bore successions of tiny green buds 
along their lengths. Also many birds were 
about. There were flocks of big corbie crows 
in their prim notarial black. Piebald French 
magpies were flickering along ahead of us, al- 
ways in pairs, and numbers of a small starling- 
like bird, very much like our field lark in look 
and habit, whose throat is yellowish and 
tawny without and lined with pure gold within, 
were singing their mating songs. Bursts of 
amorous pipings came from every side, and as 
the male birds mounted in the air their breast 
feathers shone in the clear soft afternoon sun- 
shine like patches of burnished copper. 

Undoubtedly spring was at hand — the spring 
which elsewhere, in the more favoured parts of 
this planet, meant reawakening life and fecund- 
ity, but which here meant only opportunity 
for renewed offensives and for more massacres, 
more suffering, more wastings of life and 
wealth and of all the manifold gifts of Nature. 
The constant sound of guns on ahead of us 

[40] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

somewhere made one think of a half-dormant 
giant grunting as he roused. Indeed it was what 
it seemed — War emerging from his hibernation 
and waking up to kill again. But little more 
than a year before it had been their war; now 
it was our war too, and the realisation of this 
difference invested the whole thing for us with 
a deeper meaning. No longer were we onlookers 
but part proprietors in the grimmest, ghastliest 
proceeding that ever was since conscious time 
began. 

We whizzed along the road for the better part 
of a mile, part of the time through dips, the 
contour of which kept us hidden from spying 
eyes in the hostile observation pits across the 
ridge to the eastward, and part of the time 
upon the backbone of this Vosges foothill. 
These latter places were shielded on their dan- 
gerous side by screens of marsh grasses woven 
in huge sheets ten feet high and swinging be- 
tween tall poles set at six-yard intervals. 
There were rips and tears in these rude valances 
to show where chance shots from German guns 
had registered during the preceding few days 
of desultory artillery fire. 

On the way we passed one full company of 
French infantry coming out of the front line 
for rest, and one contingent of our own sol- 
diers. The Frenchmen were hampered, as 
French foot soldiers on the move always are, 
by enormous burdens draped upon them, 
back, flank and front; and under the dirt and 

[41] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

dust their faces wore weary drawn lines. Laden 
like sumpter mules, they went by us at the 
heavy plodding gait of their kind, which is so 
different from the swaggering, swinging route 
step of the Yankee, and so different from the 
brisk clip at which the Britisher travels, even 
in heavy-marching order, but which all the 
same eats up the furlongs mighty fast. 

The Americans were grouped on a little green 
breast of sod. At the peak of the small rounded 
elevation was a smaller terrace like a nipple, and 
from this rose one of those stone shrines so 
common in this corner of Europe — ^a stone base 
with a rusted iron cross bearing a figure of the 
Christ above it. There were a dozen or more 
of our boys lying or squatted here resting. 

We came to a battalion headquarters, which 
seemed rather a high-sounding name for a col- 
lection of thatched dugouts under a bank. 
Here leaving the car we were turned over to a 
young intelligence officer, who agreed to pilot 
us through certain front-line defences, which our 
people only two days before had taken over 
from the French. But before we started each 
of us put on his iron helmet, which, next only 
to the derby hat of commerce, is the homeliest 
and the most uncomfortable design ever fash- 
ioned for wear in connection with the human 
head; and each one of us hung upon his breast, 
like a palmer's packet, his gas mask, inclosed 
in its square canvas case. 

Single file then the three of us proceeded 

[42] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

along a footpath that was dry where the sun 
had reached it and shmy with mud where it 
had lain in shadow, until we passed under an 
arbour of withered boughs and found ourselves 
in the mouth of the communication trench. It 
was wide enough in some places for two men 
to pass each other by scrouging, and in other 
places so narrow that a full-sized man bearing 
his accoutrements could barely wriggle his way 
through. Its sides were formed sometimes of 
shored planking set on end, but more often 
of withes cunningly wattled together. It is 
wonderful what a smooth fabric a French 
peasant can make with no material save bundles 
of pliant twigs and no tools save his two hands. 
Countless miles of trenches are lined with this 
osier work. Some of it has been there for 
years, but except where a shell strikes it stays 
put. 

In depth the trench ranged from eight feet 
to less than six. In the deeper places we 
marched at ease, but in the shallow ones we 
went forward at a crouch, for if we had stood 
erect here our heads would have made fair 
targets for the enemy, who nowhere was more 
than a mile distant, and who generally was 
very much closer. Sometimes we trod on 
"duck boards" as the Americans call them, or 
"bath mats" in the Britisher's vernacular, 
laid end to end. A duck board is fabricated 
by putting down two scantlings parallel and 
eighteen inches apart and effecting a permanent 
[43] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

union between them by means of many cross 
strips of wood securely nailed on, with narrow 
spaces between the strips so that the foothold 
is securer upon these corrugations than it would 
be on an uninterrupted expanse. It somewhat 
resembles the runway by which ducks advance 
from their duck pond up a steep bank; hence 
one of its names. It looks rather less the 
other thing for which it is named. 

The duck board makes the going easier in 
miry places but it is a treacherous friend. 
Where it is not firmly imbedded fore and aft 
in the mud the far end of it has an unpleasant 
habit, when you tread with all your weight on 
the near end, of rising up and grievously smit- 
ing you as you pitch forward on your face. 
Likewise when you are in a hurry it dearly 
loves to teeter and slip and slosh round. How- 
ever, to date no substitute for it has been 
found. Probably enough duck boards are in 
use on all the Fronts, in trenches and out of 
them, to make a board walk clear across our 
own continent. Beyond Ypres, where the 
British and Belgians are, I saw miles and miles 
of them the other day. 

Here in Eastern France we sometimes footed 
it along these duck boards, but more often we 
dragged our feet in mud — sticky, clinging, af- 
fectionate yellowish-grey mud — which came up 
to the latchets of our boots and made each 
rod of progress a succession of violent struggles. 
It was through this muck, along the narrow 

[ 44 ] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

twistywise passage, that food and munitions 
must be carried up to the front hues and the 
wounded must be carried back. Traversing 
it, men, as we saw, speedily became mired to 
the hair roots, and wearied beyond descrip- 
tion. Now then, magnify and multiply by ten 
the conditions as we found them on this day 
after nearly a week of fair weather and you 
begin to have a faint and shadowy conception 
of trench conditions in the height of the rainy 
season in midwinter, when strong men grow 
so tired that they drop down and drown in the 
semiliquid streams. 

The duck board is hard on human shins and 
human patience but it saves life and it saves 
time, which in war very frequently is more 
valuable than lives. It was the duck board, 
as much as the rifle and the big gun, which en- 
abled the Canadians to win at Passchendaele 
last November. With its aid they laid a wooden 
pathway to victory across one of the most 
hideous loblollies in the flooded quagmires of 
Flanders. Somebody will yet write a tribute 
to the duck board, which now gets only curses 
and abuse. 

We had come almost to the cross trench, 
meeting few soldiers on the way, when a sud- 
den commotion overhead made us squat low and 
crane our necks. Almost above us a boche 
aeroplane was circling about droning like all the 
bees in the world. As we looked the anti- 
aircraft guns, concealed all about us, began 

[45] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

firing at it. Downy dainty pompons of smoke 
burst out in the heavens below it and above it 
and all about it. 

As it fled back, seemingly uninjured, out of 
the danger zone I was reminded of the last 
time before this when I had seen such a sight 
from just such a vantage place. But then the 
scene had been the plateau before Laon in the 
fall of 1914, and then the sky spy had been a 
Frenchman and then the guns which chased 
him away had been German guns and for com- 
panion I had a German Staff-officer. 

We went on, and round the next turn en- 
countered half a dozen youngsters in khaki, 
faced with mud stripings, who barely had 
paused in whatever they were doing to watch 
the brief aerial bombardment. New as they 
were to this game they already were accus- 
tomed to the sight of air fighting. Half a dozen 
times a day or oftener merely by turning their 
faces upward they might see the hostile raider 
being harried back to its hangar by defending 
cannon or by French planes or by both at once. 
Later that same day we were to see a German 
plane stricken in its flight by a well-placed shot 
from an American battery. We saw how on the 
instant, like a duck shot on the wing, it changed 
from a living, sentient, perfectly controlled 
mechanism into a dishevelled, wounded thing, 
and how it went swirling in crazy disorganised 
spirals down inside its own lines. 

For the trip through the cross trenches which 
[46] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

marked the forward angle of our defences we 
were joined by a second chaperon in the person 
of an infantry captain — a man of German birth 
and German name, born in Cologne and 
brought to America as a child, who at the age 
of forty-three had given up a paying business 
and left a family to volunteer for this business, 
and who in all respects was just as good an 
American as you or I, reader, can ever hope 
to be. It was his company that held the 
trenches for the time, and he volunteered tc 
let us see what they were doing. 

The physical things he showed us are by 
now old stories to Americans. Reading de- 
scriptions of them would be stale business for 
people at home who read magazines — the little 
dirt burrows roofed with withes and leaves, 
where machine guns' crews squatted behind 
guns whose muzzles aimed out across the de- 
batable territory; the observation posts, where 
the lads on duty grumbled at the narrow range 
of vision provided by the periscopes and much 
preferred to risk their lives peeping over the 
parapets; the tiny rifle pits, each harbouring a 
couple of youngsters; the gun steps, or scarps, 
on which men squatted to do sniper work and 
to try for hostile snipers across the way; the 
niches in the trench sides, where hand gre- 
nades — French and British models — lay in 
handy reach in case of a surprise attack; the 
stacks of rifle and machine-gun cartridges in 
their appointed places all along the inner sides 
[47] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of the low dirt parapets; the burrows, like the 
overgrown nests of bank martins, into which 
tired men might crawl to steal a bit of rest; 
the panels of thickly meshed barbed wire on 
light but strong metal frames so disposed that 
they might with instantaneous dispatch be 
thrust into place to block the way of invading 
raiders following along behind retreating de- 
fenders; the wire snares for the foes' feet, which 
might be dropped in the narrow footway after 
the retiring force had passed; and all the rest 
of the paraphernalia of trench warfare which 
the last three years and a half have produced. 

Anyhow it was not these things that inter- 
ested us; rather was it the bearing of our men, 
accustoming themselves to new duties in new 
surroundings; facing greater responsibilities 
than any of them perhaps had ever faced before 
in his days, amid an environment fraught with 
acute personal peril. And studying them I 
was prouder than ever of the land that bore 
them and sundry millions of others like unto 
them. 

We halted at a spot where the trench was 
broken in somewhat and where the fresh new 
clods upon the dirt shelf halfway up it were all 
stained a strange, poisonous green colour. The 
afternoon before a shell had dropped there, 
killing one American and wounding four others. 
It was the fumes of the explosive which had 
corroded the earth to make it bear so curious 
a tint. This company then had had its first 
[48] 



"all AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES ' 

fatality under fire; its men had undergone the 
shock of seeing one of their comrades converted 
into a mangled fragment of a man, but they 
bore themselves as though they had been 
veterans. 

In but one thing did they betray themselves 
as green hands, and this was in a common de- 
sire to expose themselves unnecessarily. As 
we went along their captain was constantly 
chiding them for poking their tin-hatted heads 
over the top, in the hope of spying out the 
German sharpshooters who continually shot 
in their direction from the coverts of a pine 
thicket, when they might have seen just as 
well through cunningly devised peepholes in 
the rifle pits. 

"I know you aren't afraid," he said to two 
especially daring youngsters, "but the man who 
gets himself killed in this war without a reason 
for it is not a hero; he's just a plain damned 
fool, remember that." 

Passing the spot where the soft damp loam 
was harried and the crumbs of it all dyed that 
diabolical greenish hue, I thought of a tale I 
had heard only the day before from a young 
Englishman who, having won his captaincy by 
two years of hard service, had then promptly 
secured a tranfer to the flying corps, where, 
as he innocently put it, "there was a chance o' 
having a bit of real fun," and who now wore 
the single wing of an observer upon the left 
breast of his tunic. I had asked him what was 
[49] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

the most dramatic thing he personally had wit- 
nessed in this war, thinking to hear some tales 
of air craftsmanship. He considered for a mo- 
ment with his brow puckered in a conscientious 
effort to remember, and then he said: 

"I think perhaps 'twas something that hap- 
pened last spring, just before I got out of the 
infantry into this bally outfit. My company 
had been in the trenches two days and nights, 
and had been rather knocked about. Really 
the place we were in was quite a bit exposed, 
you know, and after we had had rather an un- 
happy time of it we got orders to pull out. 
Just as the order reached us along came a 
whiz-bang and burst. It killed one of my 
chaps dead, and half a minute later another 
shell dropped in the same place and covered 
him under tons and tons of earth, all except 
his right hand, which stuck out of the dirt. 
Quite a decent sort he was too — a good fighter 
and cheerful and all that sort of thing; very 
well liked, he was. There was no time to dig 
him out even if we had been able to carry his 
body away with us; we had to leave him right 
there. So as the first man passed by where he 
was buried he bent over and took the dead 
hand in his hand and shook it and said 'Good- 
bye, old one!' like that. All the men followed 
the example. Each one of us, oflBcers included, 
shook the dead hand and said good-bye to the 
dead man; and this was the last we ever saw 
of him, or of that rotten old trench, either." 

[50] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

As nonchalantly as though he had been a 
paid postman going through a quiet street a 
volunteer mail distributor came along putting 
letters, papers and small mail parcels from the 
States into soiled eager hands. Each man, 
taking over what was given him, would prompt- 
ly hunker down in some convenient cranny to 
read the news from home; news which was 
months old already. I saw one, a broad-faced, 
pale-haired youth, reading a Slavic paper; and 
another, a <;fcorporal, reading one that was 
printed in Italian. The other papers I noted 
were all printed in English. 

It was from a begrimed and bespattered 
youngster who had got a paper printed in 
English that I heard the news about Ty Cobb; 
and when you appraised the character of the 
boy and his comrades a mud-lined hole in the 
ground in Eastern France, where a machine 
gun stammered round the corner and the snipers 
sniped away to the right of him and the left of 
him, seemed a perfectly natural place for the 
discussion of great tidings in baseball. If he 
had undertaken to discourse upon war or Ger- 
mans I should have felt disappointed in him, 
because on his part it would not have been 
natural; and if he was anything at all he was 
natural. 

At the end of perhaps a mile of windings 

about in torturous going we, following after 

our guides, turned into a shallower side trench 

which debouched off the main workings. Going 

[51] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

almost upon ail fours for about sixty or sev- 
enty yards we found ourselves in a blind ending. 
Here was a tiny ambuscade roofed over with 
sod and camouflaged on its one side with dead 
herbage, wherein two soldiers crouched. By a 
husky whisper floating back to us over the 
shoulder of the captain we learned that this 
was the most advanced of our listening posts. 
Having told us this he extended an invitation, 
which I accepted; and as he flattened back 
against the earth making himself small I wrig- 
gled past him and crawled into place to join 
its two silent occupants. 

One of them nudging me in the side raised 
a finger and aimed it through a tiny peephole 
in the screening of dead bough and grasses. 
I looked where he pointed and this was what I 
saw: 

At the level of my eyes the earth ran away 
at a gentle slope for a bit and then just as it 
reached a thicket of scrub pines, possibly two 
hundred feet away, rose sharply. Directly in 
front of me was our own tangle of rusted barbed 
wire. On beyond it, perhaps a hundred and 
sixty feet distant, where the rise began, was 
a second line of wire, and that was German wire, 
as I guessed without being told. In between, 
the soil was all harrowed and upturned into 
great cusps as though many swine had been 
rooting there for mast. A few straggly bushes 
still adhered to the sides of the shell holes, and 
the patches of grass upon the tortured sward 

[52] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES" 

displayed a greenish tinge where the saps of 
spring were beginning to rise from the roots. 

Not far away and almost directly in front of 
me one of those yellow-breasted starling birds 
was trying his song with considerable success. 

"How far away are they.^^" I inquired in 
the softest possible of whispers of the nearer- 
most of the hole's tenants. 

"Right there in those little trees," he an- 
swered. "I ain't never been able to see any of 
them — they're purty smart about keepin' them- 
selves out of sight — but there's times, 'specially 
toward night, when we kin hear 'em plain 
enough talking amongst themselves and movin' 
round over there. It's quiet as a graveyard 
now, but for a while this mornin' one of their 
sharpshooters got busy right over there in front 
of where you're lookin' now." 

Involuntarily I drew my head down into my 
shoulders. The youth alongside laughed a 
noiseless laugh. 

"Oh, you needn't worry," he said in my 
ear; "there ain't a chancet for him to see us; 
we're too well hid. At that, I think he must've 
suspected that this here lump of dirt was a 
shelter for our folks because twicet this mornin' 
he took a shot this way. One of his bullets 
lodged somewhere in the sods over your head 
but the other one hit that bush there. See 
where it cut the little twig off." 

I peered where he indicated and made out 
a ragged stump almost within arm's reach of 
[53] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

me, where a willow sprout had been shorn 
away. The sap was oozing from the top like 
blood from a fresh wound. My instructor went 
on: 

"But after the second shot he quit. One of 
our fellers back behind us a piece took a crack 
at him and either he got him or else the Heinie 
found things gettin' too warm for him and 
pulled his freight back into them deep woods 
further up the hill. So it's been nice and quiet 
ever since." 

The captain wormed into the burrow, filling 
it until it would hold no more. 

"Is this your first close-up peep at No Man's 
Land.f^" he inquired in as small a voice as his 
vocal cords could make. 

Before I could answer the private put in: 

"It might a-been No Man's Land oncet, 
cap'n, but frum now on it's goin' to be all 
Amurikin clear out to them furtherest wires 
yonder." 

So that was how and when I found the title 
for this chapter. Everything considered I think 
it makes a very good title, too. I only wish 
I had the power to put as much of the manifest 
spirit of our soldiers into what I have here 
written as is compassed in the caption I have 
borrowed. 

What happened thereafter was largely per- 
sonal so far as it related to my companion and 
me, but highly interesting from our viewpoint. 
We had emerged from the front-line trench on 
[54] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES 

our way back. In order to avoid a particularly 
nasty bit of footing in the nearermost end of 
the communication work we climbed out of the 
trench and took a short cut across a stretch of 
long-abandoned meadowland. We thought we 
were well out of sight of the Germans, who 
at that point were probably half a mile 
away. 

A cup of land formed a natural shield from 
any eyes except eyes in an aeroplane — so we 
thought — and besides there were no aeroplanes 
about. Once over the edge of the trench and 
down into the depression we felt quite safe; 
anyway the firing that was going on seemed very 
far away. We slowed up our gait. From drag- 
ging our feet through the mire we were dripping 
wet with sweat, so I hauled off my coat. This 
necessitated a readjustment of belt and gas- 
mask straps. Accordingly all three of us — 
the young intelligence officer, my comrade and 
I — took advantage of the halt to smoke. The 
two others lit cigarettes but I preferred some- 
thing stronger. 

I was trying to light a practical cigar with 
a property match — which is a very common 
performance on the part of my countrymen in 
this part of the world — when a noise like the end 
of everything — a nasty, whiplike crash — sound- 
ed at the right of us, and simultaneously a 
German shell struck within a hundred feet 
of us, right on the rim of the little hollow in 
which we had stopped, throwing a yellow 
[55] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

geyser of earth away up into the air and 
peppering our feet and legs with bits of 
gravel. 

So then we came on away from there. 1 
chucked away my box of matches, which were 
French and therefore futile, and I must have 
mislaid my cigar, which was American and 
therefore priceless, for I have never seen it 
since. Anyway I had for the time lost the 
desire for tobacco. There are times when one 
cares to smoke and times when one does not 
care to smoke. As we scuttled for the shelter 
of the trench four more shells fell in rapid suc- 
cession and burst within a short distance of 
where the first one had gone off, and each time 
we felt the earth shake under our feet and out 
of the tails of our eyes saw the soil rising in a 
column to spread out mushroom fashion and 
descend in pattering showers. 

So, using the trench as an avenue, we con- 
tinued to go away from there; and as we went 
guns continued to bay behind us. An hour 
later, back at battalion headquarters, we 
learned that the enemy dropped seventy shells 
— five-inch shells — in the area that we had 
traversed. But unless one of them destroyed 
the cigar I left behind me it was all clear waste 
of powder and shrapnel, as I am pleased to be 
able to report. 

That night just after dusk forty-five of our 
boys, with twice as many Frenchmen, went 
over the top at the very point we had visited, 
156] 



ALL AMURIKIN OUT TO THEM WIRES ' 

and next morning, true enough, and for quite 
a while after that. No Man's Land was "All 
Amurikin clear out to them furtherest wires." 



'[ 57 ] 



CHAPTER m 
HELL'S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

THE surroundings were as French as 
French could be, but the supper tasted 
of home. We sat at table, two of us 
being correspondents and the rest of 
us staff officers of a regiment of the Rainbow 
Division; and the orderlies brought us Ham- 
burger steak richly perfumed with onion, and 
good hot soda biscuit, and canned tomatoes 
cooked with cracker crumbs and New Orleans 
molasses, and coffee, and fried potatoes; and 
to end up with there were genuine old-fashioned 
doughnuts — "fried holes," the Far Westerners 
call them. 

The mingled aromas of these rose like familiar 
incense from strange altars, for the room wherein 
all of us, stout and willing trenchermen, sat and 
supped was the chief room of what once upon 
a time, before the war came along and cracked 
down upon the land, had been some prosperous 
burgher's home on the main street of a drowsy 
village cuddled up in a sweet and fertile valley 
under the shoulders of the Vosges Mountains. 

[58] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

From a niche in the corner a plaster saint, 
finished off in glaring Easter-egg colours, re- 
garded us with one of his painted eyes, the 
other being gone. The stove had been carried 
away, either by the owner when he fled, away 
back in 1914, or by the invading Hun before 
he retreated to his present lines a few miles 
distant; but a segment of forgotten stovepipe 
protruded like a waterspout gone dry, from 
its hole above the mantelpiece. On the plas- 
tered wall of battered, broken blue cast, behind 
the seat where the colonel ruled the board, 
hung a family portrait of an elderly gentleman 
with placid features but fierce and indomitable 
whiskers. The picture was skewed at such an 
angle the whiskers appeared to be growing out 
into space sidewise. Generations of feet had 
worn grooves in the broad boards of the floor, 
which these times was never free of mud 
stains, no matter how often the orderlies might 
rid up the place. So far and so much the set- 
ting was French. 

But stained trench coats of American work- 
manship dangled from pegs set in the plaster- 
ing, each limply suggestive in its bulges and its 
curves of the shape of the man who wore it 
through most of his waking hours. The mantel- 
shelf was burdened with gas masks and sauce- 
pan hats of pressed steel. A small trestle that 
was shoved up under one of the two grimed 
front windows bore a litter of American news- 
papers and American magazines. As for the 
159} 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

doughnuts, they were very crisp and spicy, 
as good Yankee doughnuts should be. I had 
finished my second one and was reaching for 
my third one when, without warning, a very 
creditable and realistic imitation of the crack 
o' doom transpired. Seemingly from within fifty 
yards of the building which sheltered us 
Gabriel's trumpet sounded forth in an ear- 
cracking, earth-racking, hair-lifting blare calcu- 
lated to raise goose flesh on iron statuary. The 
dishes danced upon the table; the coffee slopped 
out of the cups; and the stovepipe over the 
chimneypiece slobbered down a trickle of 
ancient soot that was, with age, turned brown 
and caky. Beneath our feet we could feel the 
old house rocking. 

Through the valley and across to the foothill 
beyond, the obscenity of sound went ringing 
and screeching, vilely profaning the calm that 
had descended upon the country with the 
going-down of the sun. 

As its last blasphemous echoes came back to 
us in a diminishing cadence one of our hosts, 
a major, leaned forward with a cheerful smile 
on his face and remarked as he glanced at the 
dial of his wrist watch: "There she goes — 
right on the minute!" 

Sure enough, there she went. Right and left, 
before us and behind us, from the north of us 
and from the south of us, and from the east 
and the west of us, big guns and small ones, 
field pieces, howitzers, mortars and light bat- 
[60] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

teries, both French and American but mostly 
French, joined in, Hke the wind, the wood and 
the brass of an orchestra obeying the baton of 
the leader. The coffee could not stay in the 
dancing cups at all. The venerable house was 
beset by an ague which ran up its shaken sides 
from the foundation stones to the roof rafters, 
where the loosened tiles clicked together like 
chattering teeth, and back down again to the 
foundations. 

The thing which we had travelled upward 
of a hundred miles in one of Uncle Sam's auto- 
mobiles to witness and afterward to write about 
was starting. The overture was on; the show 
would follow. And it was high time we claimed 
our reserved seats in the front row. 

I use the word "show" advisedly, because in 
the glossary of phrases born out of this war 
anything in the nature of a thrust or a blow 
delivered against the enemy is a show. A 
great offensive on a wide front is a big show; 
a raid by night into hostile territory is a little 
show; a feint by infantry, undertaken with 
intent to deceive the other side at a given 
point while the real attack is being launched 
at a second given point, and accompanied by 
much vain banging of gunpowder and much 
squibbing-off of rockets and flares and star 
shells is a "Chinese show" — to quote the cant 
or trade name; I think the English first used the 
term, but our fellows have been borrowing ever 
since the first contingent came over last year. 
[61] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

This particular show to which we had been 
bidden as special guests was to be a foray by 
night over the tops preceded by artillery prep- 
aration. Now such things as these happen 
every night or every day somewhere on the 
Western Front; times are when they happen in 
difiPerent sectors at the rate of half a dozen 
within the twenty-four hours. In the dis- 
patches each one means a line or so of type; 
in the field it means a few prisoners, a few 
fresh graves, a few yards of trench work blasted 
away, a few brier patches of barbed wire to be 
repatched; in the minds of most readers of the 
daily papers it means nothing but the tire- 
some reiteration of a phrase that is tiresome 
and staled. But to us it meant something. 
It was our boys who were going in and go- 
ing over; and our guns were to be partners in 
the prior enterprise of blazing the way for 
them. 

No matter how much one may read of the 
cost of war operations in dollars and in time 
and in labour, I am sure one does not really 
begin to appreciate the staggering expenditure 
of all three that is requisite to accomplish even 
the smallest of aggressive movements until one 
has opportunity, as we now had, to see with 
one's own eyes what necessarily had to be 
done by way of preliminary. 

Take for instance the present case. The raid 
in hand was to be no great shakes of a raid. 
Forty-five Americans and three times their 
[62] 



hell's fire for the HUNS 

number of Frenchmen would participate in it. 
Within twenty minutes, if all went well — and it 
did — they would have returned from their ex- 
cursion into hostile territory, with prisoners 
perhaps, or else with notes and letters taken 
from the bodies of dead enemies which might 
serve to give the Intelligence Department a 
correct appraisal of the character and numbers 
of the troops opposing us in this sector. In the 
vast general scheme of the campaign now about 
renewing itself it would be no more than an 
inconsequential pin prick in the foe's side — a 
thing to be done and mentioned briefly in the 
dispatches, and then forgotten. 

But mark you how great and how costly the 
artillery accompaniment must be. More than 
a hundred guns, ranging in calibre from a nine- 
inch bore down to a three-inch bore, would 
join in the preparation and in the barrage fire. 
More than ten thousand rounds of ammunition 
would be fired, this not taking into account 
the supplies for the forty-three machine guns 
and for the batteries of trench mortars which 
were to cooperate. Many a great battle of our 
Civil War had been fought out with the ex- 
penditure on both sides of one-tenth or one- 
twentieth part the gross weight of metal that 
would be directed at the boche beyond the ridge. 
The cost for munitions alone, excluding every 
other item of a score of items, might run to a 
quarter of a million dollars; might conceivably 
run considerably beyond that figure. And the 
[63] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

toil performed and the pains taken beforehand 
to insure success — wowie! 

For days past the French had been bringing 
up pieces and massing them here for the pur- 
pose of this one Httle stab at the Hun's armoured 
flank. As we travelled hither we had seen the 
motor-drawn guns labouring along the wide 
high roads; had seen the ammunition trucks 
crawling forward in long lines; had seen at 
every tiny village behind the Front the gun 
crews resting in bad streets named for good 
saints. By the same token, on the following 
day, which was Sunday, we were to see the same 
thing repeated, except that then the procession 
would be headed the other way — going back 
to repeat the same wearisome proceeding else- 
where. 

Days, too, had been spent in planning the 
raid; in mapping out and plotting out the 
especial spot chosen for attack; in coordinating 
all the arms of the service which would be 
employed; in planning signals for the show and 
drilling its actors. And now all this prepara- 
tion requisite and essential to the carrying out 
of the undertaking had been completed; and all 
the guns had been planted in their appointed 
places and craftily hidden; and all the shells had 
been brought up — thousands of tons of them — 
and properly bestowed; and the little handful 
of men who were to have a direct hand in the 
performance of the main job, for which all the 
rest would be purely preliminary, had been 
[64] 



hell's fire for the HUNS 

chosen and sent forward to ordained stations, 
there to await the word. And so up we got 
from table and went out across a threshold, 
which quaked like a living thing as we crossed 
it, to see the spectacular side of the show. 

Inside the house the air had been churned 
up and down by the detonations. Outside 
literally it was being rent into fine bits. One 
had the feeling that the atmosphere was all 
shredded up fine, so that instead of lying in 
layers upon the earth it floated in torn and 
dishevelled strips; one had the feeling that the 
upper ether must be full of holes and voids 
and the rushing together of whipped and eddy- 
ing wind currents. This may sound incoherent, 
but I find in my vocabulary no better ter- 
ninology to convey a sense of the impression 
that possessed me as I stepped forth into the 
open. 

We had known in advance that there were 
guns in great number disposed about the sur- 
rounding terrain. Walking about under mili- 
tary guidance in the afternoon we had seen 
sundry batteries ensconced under banks, in 
thickets and behind low natural parapets where 
the earth ridged up; and had noted how cun- 
ningly they had been concealed from aeroplanes 
scouting above and from the range of field glasses 
in the German workings on beyond. 

But we had no notion until then that there 
were so many guns near by or that some of 
them were so close to the village where we 
[65] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

had stopped to eat. We must almost have 
stepped on some of them without once sus- 
pecting their presence. The abiHty of the 
French so well to hide a group of five big pieces, 
each with a carriage as large as a two-ton 
truck and each with a snout projecting two or 
three yards beyond it, and with a limber pro- 
jecting out behind it, shows what advances 
the gentle arts of ambuscade and camouflage 
have made since this war began. Seen upon 
the open road a big cannon painted as it is 
from muzzle to breach with splotchings of yel- 
lows and browns and ochres seems, for its 
size, the most conspicuous thing in the world. 
But once bedded down in its nest, with its 
gullet resting upon the ring back of earth 
that has been thrown up for it, and a miracle 
of protective colouration instantaneously is 
achieved. Its whole fabric seems to melt into 
and become a part of the soil and the withered 
herbage and the dirt-coloured sandbags which 
encompass it abaft, alongside and before. It 
is the difference between a mottled snake 
crawling across a brick sidewalk and the same 
snake coiled and motionless amid dried leaves 
and boulders in the woods. Nature always has 
protected her wild creatures thus; it took the 
greatest of wars for mankind to learn a lesson 
that is as old as creation is. 

Standing there in the square of the wrecked 
village we could sense that in all manner of 
previously unsuspected coverts within the im- 
[66] 



hell's fire for the HUNS 

mediate vicinity guns were at work — guns 
which ranged from the French seventy-fives 
to big nine-inch howitzers. As yet twilight 
had not sufficiently advanced for us to see the 
flash of the firing, and of course nowadays 
there is mighty little smoke to mark the single 
discharge of a single gun; but we could tell 
what went on by the testimony of a most vast 
tumult. 

We were "ringed about by detonations; %y 
jars which impacted against the earth like 
blows of a mighty sledge on a yet mightier 
smithy; by demoniac screechings which tore 
the tortured welkin into still finer bits; by 
fierce clangings of metal; by thudding echoes 
floating back from where the charges had 
burst; by the more distant voices of certain 
German guns replying to our salvo as our gun- 
ners dedicated the dusk to all this unloosened 
hellishness and offered up to the evening star 
their sulphurous benedictions. It was Thor, 
Vulcan, Tubal Cain, Bertha Krupp and the 
Bethlehem Steel Works all going at full blast 
together; it was a thousand Walpurgis Nights 
rolled into one, with Dante's Inferno out- 
Infernoed on the side. And yet by a curious 
phenomenon we who stood there with this 
hand-made, man-made demonism unleashed 
and prevalent about us could hear plainly 
enough what a man five feet away who spoke 
in a fairly loud voice might be saying. 

"You think this is brisk, eh.'^" asked our 
[67] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

friend, the major. "Well, it's only the starter; 
the ball has just opened." 

He tucked his thumbs into the girth harness- 
ings of his Sam Browne and spraddled his legs 
wide apart. 

"Wait," he promised; "just wait until all 
the guns get into action in twenty minutes or 
half an hour from now. Then you'll really 
hear something. Take it from me, you will. 
And in the meantime we might go along 
with these fellows yonder, don't you think 
so.?"' 

Through the deepening twilight we followed 
a party of French infantrymen up a gentle 
slope to the crest of a little hill behind the 
shattered town, where the cemetery was. In 
this light the horizon-blue uniforms took on 
the colour tone of the uniforms worn by the 
Confederates in our Civil War, but their painted 
metal helmets looked like polished turtle 
shells. They slouched along, as the poilu loves 
to slouch along when not fully accoutred, their 
hands in their breeches pockets and their half- 
reefed putties flapping upon their shanks. We 
trailed them, and some of our soldiers, officers 
and enlisted men, trailed us. 

Half an hour later I was to witness a curious 
and yet, I think, a characteristic thing. Most 
of the American privates grew tired of the 
spectacle that was spread out before them and 
slipped away to their billets to go to bed — 
this, too, in spite of the fact that scarcely one 
[68] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

of them had ever witnessed cannonading on so 
extensive a scale or indeed on any scale before. 
Nevertheless, the bombardment speedily be- 
came to them a commonplace and rather tedi- 
ous affair. 

"Come on, you fellows," I heard one tall 
stripling say to a couple of his mates. "Me 
for the hay. If the Heinies would only slam 
a few big ones back in this direction there 
might be some fun, but as it is, there's nothin' 
doin' round here for me." 

But the Frenchmen, all intent and alert, 
stayed until the show ended. Yet a thing 
like this was an old story to them, for they 
were veterans at the game whereat our men still 
were the greenest of novices. I suppose there 
was an element of theatricalism in the sight 
and in the fury of sound which appealed to 
the Gallic sense of drama that was in them. 
Be the cause what it was, the thing occurred 
just as I am telling it. 

We mounted the hill and rounded the stone 
wall of the burying ground. The village in the 
hollow below had been quite battered out of 
its original contours, but strangely enough the 
cemetery, through the years of intermittent 
fighting and shell firing that had waged about 
it, was almost unscathed. It was a populous 
place, the cemetery was, as we had noted 
earlier in the day. Originally it had contained 
only the graves of the inhabitants, but now 
these were outnumbered twenty to one by 
[69] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

mounds covering French soldiers who had fallen 
in action or had died of wounds or ntttural 
causes in this immediate vicinity. The same 
is true of hundreds of other graveyards in this 
country; is probably true of most of France's 
cemeteries. 

I have seen places where the wooden crosses 
made hedge rows, line behind line for miles on 
a stretch, and so thick-set were the markers 
that, viewed from the distance, they conveyed 
the impression of paling fences. 

France has become a land of these wooden 
crosses and these six-foot mounds. It is part 
of the toll — a small part of the toll — she has 
paid for the right of freedom and in the fight 
to make this world once more a fit place for 
decent beings to abide in. 

On the knoll behind the cemetery we came 
to a halt. Night was creeping down from the 
foothills, making the earth black where before 
it had faded to a common grey; but overhead 
the sky still showed in the last faint traces of 
the afterglow, with the blue of an unflawed 
turquoise against which the stars stood out like 
crumbs of pure gold. The broken and snaggled 
roof lines of the clumped houses of the town 
were vanishing; the mountain beyond seemed 
creeping up nearer and nearer to us. More 
plainly than before we could mark out the 
positions of the nearmost batteries for now at 
each discharge of a gun a darting jab of red 
flame shot forth. Where all the guns of a 
[70] 



hell's fire for the HUNS 

battery were being served and fired in rapid 
succession the blazes ran together like hem- 
stitches, making one think of a fiery needle 
plying in and out of a breadth of black velvet. 
Farther away the flashes were blurred into 
broader and paler flares so that on three sides 
of us the horizon was circled with constantly 
rising, constantly dying glows like heat light- 
ning on a summer night. 

The points where shells fell and burst were 
marked for us with red geysers, which uprose 
straight instead of slanting out at a slightly 
upward tilted angle, as did the spoutings from 
the mouths of the guns. As nearly as we 
might tell the enemy fire was comparatively 
light. Only we could see upon the far flanks 
of the little mountain in front of us a distant 
flickering illumination, which showed that his 
counter batteries were busy. On every hand 
white signal rockets rose frequently, and occa- 
sionally flares hung burning halfway up the 
walls of the sky. 

Of a sudden all hell broke loose directly be- 
hind us. I use the term without desire to be pro- 
fane and in a conscientious effort to give some 
notion of a physical occurrence. At any rate 
it seemed to us that all hell let loose. What 
really happened was that two guns of a French 
battery of nine-inch heavies, from their post 
directly in our rear and not more than an eighth 
of a mile distant from us, had fired simultane- 
ously, and their shells had travelled directly 
[71] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

over our heads, aiming for an unseen objective 
miles forward. 

Then, and every time thereafter that one of 
the nine-inchers spewed its bellyful of high ex- 
plosive forth, the sound of it dominated and 
overmastered all other sounds. First there was 
the crash — a crash so great that our inadequate 
tongue yields neither adjective nor noun fitly 
to comprehend it, the trouble being that the 
language has not kept step with the develop- 
ments of artillery in this war. Our dictionary 
is going to need an overhauling when this job 
of licking Germany is finished. 

Well, first off there was the crash that was 
like the great granddaddy of all the crashes in 
the world, making one feel that its vocal force 
must have folded up the heavens like a scroll. 
Then, as a part of it, would come the note of 
the projectile rushing through the ripped ether 
above us, and this might be likened to a long 
freight train travelling on an invisible aerial 
right of way at a speed a thousand times 
greater than any freight train ever has or ever 
will attain. Then there would float back a 
tremendous banshee wail, and finally, just be- 
fore the roar of the shell's explosion, a whine 
as though a lost puppy of the size of ten ele- 
phants were wandering through the skies, com- 
plaining in a homesick key as it went — the 
whole transaction taking place in an infinitesi- 
mal part of the time which has here been re- 
quired for me to set down my own auricular 
[72] 



hell's fire for the HUNS 

impressions of it, and incidentally creating an 
infinitely more vivid impression than possible 
can be suggested by my lame and inadequate 
metaphors. 

Comparatively, there was a hush in the 
clamour and clangour succeeding this happen- 
ing — not that the firing in any way abated, 
for rather was it augmented now — but only that 
it seemed so to me; and in the lull, away off 
on our left, I could for the first time make out 
the whirring, ripping sound of a machine gun 
or a row of machine guns. 

The major consulted the luminous face of his 
wrist watch. 

"I thought so," he vouchsafed. "It's time 
for the barrage to start and for the boys to go 
over the top. Now we ought to see some real 
fireworks that'll make what has gone on up 
to now seem puny and trifling and no ac- 
count." 

Which, all things considered, was an under- 
estimation of what ensued hard on the heels 
of his announcement. Personally I shall not 
attempt to describe it; the size of the task 
leaves me abashed and mortified. But if the 
reader in the goodness of his heart and abun- 
dance of his patience will re-read what already 
I have written in an effort to tell him what I 
had heard and had seen and had felt, and will 
multiply it by five, adding, say, fifty per cent 
of the sum total for good measure, he will 
have, I trust, a measure of comprehension of 
[73] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

the ensemble. But he must do the work; my 
founts are dry. 

Furthermore, he must inagine the augmented 
hullabaloo — which should be pronounced hella- 
baloo — agoing on for twenty-five minutes at 
such rate that no longer might one distinguish 
separate reports — save only when the devil's 
fast freight aforementioned passed over our 
heads — ^but all were mingled and fused into 
one composite, continuous, screeching, whining, 
wailing, splitting chorus. 

Twenty-five minutes thus, and then a green 
rocket went up from near the forward post of 
conunand where those directly in charge of the 
operation watched, and before it had descended 
in a spatter of emerald sparks which dimmed 
out and died as they neared the earth the firing 
from our batteries began to lessen in volume 
and in rapidity. Within those twenty-five min- 
utes the real object of the operation had taken 
place. Either the raiders had gone over the 
top or they had been driven back in; either they 
had accomplished their design of penetrating 
the enemy's second line of defences or they had 
failed. In any event the movement, all care- 
fully timed and all mathematically worked out, 
was as good as over. To learn better at first- 
hand exactly what results had been obtained we 
returned to the village and passed through it 
and picking our way in the inky darkness went 
along a road toward the post of command. 

The road, though, was deserted, and after a 
[74] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

bit we retraced the way back to the building 
where we had supped and made ourselves com- 
fortable in the room of the colonel of the regi- 
ment holding the line at this particular point. 
An orderly brought us the last of the doughnuts 
to nibble on, and upon the ancient hearthstone 
we took turns at cracking French hazelnuts 
with a hammer while at intervals the building 
jarred to the thumpings of such guns as contin- 
ued to fire. 

Nearly an hour passed, and then in came the 
colonel and with him a French liaison officer, 
both of them with tired lines about their 
mouths. They had been under a strain, as their 
looks showed, and they flung themselves down 
on adjacent cots with little sighs of relief and 
told us the news. In a way the raid had been 
a success; in another way it had not. All the 
men who went over the top had returned again 
after penetrating up to the German secondary 
trenches. Several of the Frenchmen had been 
wounded, not seriously. None of the Americans 
had anything worse than barbed-wire cuts and 
bruised shins to show for his experience. 

Returning, the raiders reported that our fire 
had completely obliterated the hostile front 
trench and had ripped its protecting wire jungle 
into broken ends. Likewise it had completely 
abolished such boches as had tarried too long 
in the enemy's forward pits and posts. Of these 
unfortunates only dismembered trunks had 
been found, with one exception. This exception 
[75] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

was a body lying in a shell hole, and not badly 
mangled but completely nude. By some freak 
the shell which killed the German had stripped 
him stark naked down to his boots. 

But the total of prisoners taken was zero, 
and likewise it was cipher. Forewarned by 
the preparatory volleying of the big guns play- 
ing on his counter batteries, the wily German, 
following his recently adopted custom, had, be- 
fore the barrage began, drawn in his defending 
forces from the first line, leaving behind only 
a few, who fell victims to the first few direct 
hits scored by our side; and therein the raid 
had failed. 

In the next sector on our right, where a day- 
light raid had been undertaken two hours be- 
fore ours got under way, the raiders had suf- 
fered a few casualties but had brought back 
two wounded captives; and in another sector, 
on our left, yet a third raid had produced four 
prisoners. I saw the unhappy four the follow- 
ing day on their way back to a laager under 
guard. One of them was a middle-aged, sickly- 
looking man, and the remaining three were 
weedy, half -grown, bewildered boys; very dif- 
ferent looking, all of them, from the prime 
sinewy material which formed the great armies 
I had seen pouring through Belgium in the late 
summer of 1914. 

All four of them, moreover, were wall-eyed 
with apprehension, and flinchy and altogether 
most miserable looking. Not even a night of 
[76] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

fair treatment and a decent breakfast had 
served to cure them of a delusion that Ameri- 
cans would take prisoners alive only for the 
pleasure of putting them to death at leisure 
afterward. What struck me as even more sig- 
nificant of the change in the personnel of the 
Kaiser's present army — conceding that these 
specimens might be accepted as average sam- 
ples of the mass — was that not one of them 
wore an Iron Cross on his blouse. From per- 
sonal observations in the first year of the war I 
had made up my mind that the decoration of 
the Iron Cross in the German Army was like 
vaccination in our own country, being, as one 
might say, compulsory. Here, though, was evi- 
dence either that the War Lord was running 
out of metal or that his system had slipped a 
cog. Likewise it was to develop later that the 
prisoners I saw wore paper underclothing. 

But I am getting ahead of my story. The 
colonel, lying back on his cot with his head on 
a canvas pillow and his muddied legs crossed, 
said at the conclusion of his account: 

"Well, we failed to bag any live game, but 
anyhow our boys behaved splendidly. They 
went over the top cheering and they came back 
in singing. You'd never have guessed they 
were green hands at this game or that this 
was the first time they had ever crossed No 
Man's Land." 

To the truth of a part of what he said I 
could testify personally, for late that afternoon 
[77] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

I had seen tlie squad marching forward to the 
spot where they were to Hne up for the sally 
later. They had been like schoolboys on a lark. 
If any one of them was afraid he refused to 
betray it; if any one of them was nervous at 
the prospect before him he hid his nervousness 
splendidly well. Only, from them as they passed 
us, they radiated a great pride in having been 
chosen for the job, and a great confidence in its 
outcome, and a great joy that to them thus 
early in their soldiering had come the coveted 
chance to show the stuff that was in them. 
And while they passed, our friend the major, 
standing alongside watching them go by, had 
said with all the fervency of a man uttering a 
prayer: 

"By Jove, aren't they bully! No officer 
could ask for finer men than that for his outfit. 
But they're leaving oodles of disappointment 
behind them at that." 

"How's that?" I asked. 

"I'll tell you how," he said: "Yesterday when 
the scheme for this thing was completed we 
were told that forty-five men out of our regi- 
ment were to be allowed to take part in to- 
night's doings. That meant fifteen men out 
of each battalion. So yesterday evening at 
parade I broke the glad tidings to my bat- 
talion and called for volunteers, first warning 
the men as a matter of routine that the work 
would be highly dangerous and no man need 
feel called upon to offer himself. Do you want 
[78] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

to know how many men out of that battalion 
volunteered? Every single solitary last dog- 
goned one of them, that's all! They came at 
me like one man. So to save as much heart- 
burning as possible I left the choice of fifteen 
out of nearly a thousand to the top sergeants 
of the companies. And in all your life you 
never saw fifteen fellows so tickled as the fifteen 
who were selected, and you never saw nine 
hundred and odd so downhearted as the lot 
who failed to get on the list. 

"That wasn't all of it, either," he went on. 
"Naturally there were some men who had been 
off on detail of one sort or another and hadn't 
been at parade. When they came last night 
and found out what had happened in their ab- 
sence — well, they simply raised merry blue 
hell, that's all. They figured somehow they'd 
been cheated. As a result I may say that my 
rest was somewhat broken. Every few min- 
utes, all night long, some boy would break into 
my room, and in the doorway salute and say, 
in a broken-hearted way: 'Now look here, major, 
this ain't square. I got as much right to go 
over the top as any feller in this regiment has, 
and just because I happened to be away this 
evenin' here I am chiselled out of my chance 
to go along. Can't you please, sir, ask the 
adjutant or somebody to let me in on this .5^' 

"That substantially was what every one of 
them said. And when I turned them down 
some of 'em went away crying like babies." 
[79] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

He glanced away across the blue hill. "I 
guess maybe I did a little crying myself." 

I thought about what the major had said 
and what the colonel had said and what I 
myself had seen after I had climbed some 
shaky stairs to be bedded down for the night 
on a pallet of blankets upon the floor of a room 
where several tired-out oflacers already snored 
away, oblivious of the reverberations of the 
shelling from our guns and from the enemy's, 
which went on until nearly daybreak. 

In the morning I got insight into another 
phase of the enlisted Yank's understanding. 
We came downstairs to breakfast — to a Sun- 
day morning breakfast. For the moment a 
Sabbath calm hung over the wrecked town and 
over the country roundabout; all was as peace- 
ful as a Quaker meeting. Red, the colonel's 
orderly, stood in the doorway picking his teeth. 
Red is six feet two inches tall, and dispropor- 
tionately narrow. He is a member of a regi- 
ment recruited in the Middle West, but he 
hails from the Panhandle of Texas, and betrays 
the fact every time he opens his mouth. At 
the moment of our approach he was addressing 
an unseen and presumably a sympathetic listener 
beyond the threshold: 

"Me, I'm, plum' outdone with these here 
French people," I heard him drawl. "Here 
we've been camped amongst 'em fer goin' on 
four months and they ain't learnt English yet. 
You'd think they'd want to know how to talk 
[80] 



HELL S FIRE FOR THE HUNS 

to people in a reg'lar honest-to-God language — 
but no, seein' seemin'ly not a-tall. I'd be 
ashamed to be so ignorunt and show it. Course 
oncet in a while you do run acrost one of 'em 
that's picked up a word here and there; but 
that's about all. 

"Now f'rinstance you take that nice-lookin' 
little woman with the black eyes and the shiny 
teeth that runs that there little store in this 
here last town we stayed a spell in before we 
come on up here. I never could remember the 
name of that there town — it was so outlandish 
soundin' — but you remember the woman, don't 
you.'* Well, there's a case in p'int. She 
was bright enough lookin' but she was like all 
the rest — it seemed like she jest couldn't or 
jest wouldn't pick up enough reg'lar words to 
help her git around. Ef I went in her place 
and asked her fer sardines she'd know what 
I meant right off and hand 'em over, but ef I 
wanted some cheese she didn't have no idea 
whut I was talkin' about. Don't it jest beat 
all!" 



[81 1 



CHAPTER IV 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

WE left Paris at an early hour of 
March 25, which was the morning 
of the fourth day of perhaps the 
greatest battle in the history of 
this or any other war, and of the third day of 
the bombardment of Paris by the long-range 
steel monster which already had become famous 
as the latest creation of the Essen workshops. 

There were three of us and no more — ^Ray- 
mond Carroll, Martin Green and I. To each 
of the three the present excursion was in the 
nature of a reunion. For more than six years 
we held down adjoining desks in the city room 
of a New York evening newspaper. Since we 
parted, Carroll and I to take other berths and 
Green to bide where he was, this had been the 
first time we had met on the same assignment. 
I counted myself lucky to be in their com- 
pany, for two better newspaper men never 
walked in shoe leather. Carroll among report- 
ers is what Elihu Root is among corporation 
lawyers. There are plenty of men in the 

[82] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

journalistic craft who know why certain facts 
pertinent to the proper telhng of a tale in print 
may not be secured; he, better than almost 
any man I ever ran across in this business, 
knows how these facts may be had, regardless 
of intervening obstacles. In his own peculiar 
way, which is a calm, quiet, detached way. 
Green is just as effective. When it comes to 
figuring where unshirted Hades is going to 
break loose next and getting first upon the spot 
he is a regular Nathan Bedford Forrest. His 
North American sanity, which is his by birth, 
and his South of Ireland wit, which is his by 
inheritance, give strength and savour to what 
he writes once he has assembled the details in 
that card index of a mind of his. 

We left Paris, heading north by east in the 
direction whence came in dim reverberations 
the never-ending sound of the big guns firing 
in the biggest of all big engagements. Through 
the courtesy of friends who are members of 
the French Government we bore special passes 
admitting us to the Soissons area. Later we 
were to learn that we were the only individuals 
not actively concerned in military operations 
who at this particularly momentous time had 
been thus favoured, all other such passes having 
been cancelled; and by the same lucky token 
we are, I believe, the only three newspaper men 
of any nationality whatsoever who may lay 
claim to having witnessed at first-hand any 
part of the close-up fighting in the most crit- 
[83] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING ' 

ical period and at one of the most critical spots 
along the crest of the culminating German 
offensive of this present year of grace and gun- 
powder, 1918. 

Indeed, so far as the available information 
goes, I think we were the only practitioners of 
the writing trade who actually got to the actual 
Front in the first week of the push. Whether 
any of our calling have got there in the succeed- 
ing weeks, I doubt. These times the war 
correspondent, so called, does not often enjoy 
such opportunities. After the army has dug 
itself in is another matter; then, within limita- 
tions, he may go pretty much where he pleases 
to go. But when the shove is on he stays 
behind, safely at the rear with the rest of the 
camp followers, and compiles his dispatches 
from the official communications, fatting them 
out with details out of the accounts of eye- 
witnesses and occasionally of participants. 

For the three of us, though, was to be vouch- 
safed the chance which comes but once in the 
modern newspaperman's life, and sometimes 
not then. By a combination of rare luck and 
yet more rare luck we not only got to the 
Front but we got clear through it. As I write 
these lines I figuratively pat myself on the 
back at the thought of having seen what I 
never expected to see when I landed on French 
soil less than a month ago. At the same time 
it behooves me to disclaim for the members of 
our party that any special sagacity on our part 

[ 84 ] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

figured in the transaction. Good fortune came 
flitting along and perched on our shoulders, 
that's all. 

If our passes had shared the common fate of 
those other passes in being annulled, if any one 
charged with authority had seen fit to halt us, 
if any one of a half dozen other things had or 
had not befallen us — we never should have gone 
where we did go. 

Except that we three were the only passengers 
on the train who did not wear French uniforms, 
and except that the train ran very slowly, 
nothing happened on the journey to distinguish 
it from any other wartime journey on a rail- 
road where always there is to be heard the dis- 
tant booming of the guns mingling with the 
clickety-clank of the car wheels, and where 
always the sight of all manner of military 
activities is to be viewed from the car windows. 

In a deep cut we halted. When we had 
waited there for perhaps twenty minutes a 
kindly oflScer volunteered the information in 
broken English that the station at Soissons 
was being shelled and that if we intended to 
enter the town it behooved us to walk in. So 
we took up our traps and walked. 

Through old trenches where long-abandoned 
German defences once had run in zigzags 
across the flanks of the hills we laboured up 
to the top, to find the road along the crest 
cumbered and in places almost clogged with 
marching troops on their way back to rest bil- 
[85] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

lets, and with civilians fleeing southward from 
Soissons or from evacuated villages within the 
zone of active hostilities. We seemingly were 
the only civilians going in; all those we met 
on that three-mile hike were coming out. To 
me the spectacle was strikingly and pathetically 
reminiscent of Belgium in mid-August of 1914 
— old men trudging stolidly ahead with loads 
upon their bent backs; women, young and old, 
dragging carts or pushing shabby baby car- 
riages that were piled high with their meagre 
belongings; grave-faced children trotting along 
at their elders' skirts; wearied soldiers falling 
out of the line to add to their already heavy 
burdens as they relieved some half-exhausted 
member of the exodus of [an unwieldy pack. 
Over the lamentable procession hung a fog of 
gritty chalk particles that had been winnowed 
up by the plodding feet. Viewed through the 
cloaking dust the figures drifted past us like 
the unreal shapes of a dream. I saw one 
middle-aged sergeant, his whiskers powdered 
white and his face above the whiskers masked 
in a sweaty white paste like a circus clown's, 
who, for all that he was in heavy marching 
order, had a grimed mite of a baby snuggled 
up to the breast of his stained tunic, with its 
little feet dangling in the crisscross of his 
leather gear and its bobbing head on his shoul- 
der. He carried the baby with one hand and 
with the other hand he dragged his rifle; and 
he looked down smiling at the bedraggled little 
[86] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

mother who travelled alongside him shoving 
before her a barrow in which another child 
sat on a pillion of bed clothes. 

I saw two infantrymen slide down a steep 
embankment to give aid to an old woman who 
struggled with a bundle almost as large as her- 
self, and then, having accomplished the job, 
running with their accoutrements slapping 
against their legs to catch up with their com- 
pany. I saw scores of sights such as this, and 
I did not hear one word of complaint uttered, 
nor did I look into one face that expressed 
aught save courage and patience. And seeing 
these things, multiplied over and over again, 
I said to myself then, as I say to myself now, 
that I do not believe Almighty God in His in- 
finite mercy Mesigned that such people as these 
should ever be conquered. 

Only one person spoke to us. A captain, 
grinning at us as he plodded by at the head of 
his company, said with a rearward flirt of his 
thumb over his shoulders: "No good, no good! 
much boom-boom!" 

Much boom-boom was emphatically right. 
Over the clustered tops of the city the hostile 
shells were cracking, and frequently to our ears 
there came along with the smashing notes of 
the explosives the clatter of tumbling walls and 
smashing tiles. Drawing nearer we divined 
that the cannonading was directed mainly at 
the railroad station, so skiTting to the left 
of the district under fire we made our way 
[87] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

through almost deserted side streets to the cen- 
tre of the town. 

Hardly a house or a wall along our route 
but bore marks of punishment. Some were 
fallen into heaps of ruins; some merely were 
pecked and scarred, with corners bitten out of 
the walls and chimneys broken into fantastic 
designs. Indeed we found out later that only 
one structure in Soissons had escaped damage 
in the shelling which went on intermittently 
in the earlier years of the war and which the 
Germans, with a sort of futile, savage fury, had 
lately renewed from their lines twelve mUes 
away to the northward. 

This sort of thing appears to be a favourite 
trick with our enemies. A village or a town 
may be abandoned by all save a few helpless 
citizens, living, God only knows how, in the 
litter of their homes; the place may be of abso- 
lutely no military value to the Allies; possibly 
no troops are quartered there and no batteries 
or wagon trains are stationed within miles of it; 
but all the same when the frenzy of their mad- 
ness descends upon them the Huns will level 
and loose their batteries upon the spot and 
make of the hideous hash which it has become 
a still more hideous hash. It is as though in 
sheer wantonness they kicked a corpse. 

We skirted the sides of the wonderful old 

cathedral, which since 1914 has stood for the 

most part in ruins, with its beautiful stained 

windows — which never can be replaced, since 

[88] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

the art of making such glass as this has been 
lost — lying underfoot in broken splinters of 
many colours. Just off the main square we 
secured quarters in a typical French inn of 
the second class, a small place with a grandilo- 
quent name. Mainly the shops and houses 
in the neighbourhood were closed and their 
owners gone away, but the proprietor of the 
little hotel and his family and his help still 
abided under their belaboured roof. Plainly 
their motto was "Business as Usual." 

Their only guests were a few American Red 
Cross workers, both men and women; a few 
American officers of the transport service; and 
a few French officers. But that day at noon, 
so we were told, the whole staff turned in and 
cooked and served, free of charge, a plentiful 
hot meal to two hundred refugees, who stag- 
gered in afoot from districts now overrun by the 
advancing Germans. These poor folk were all 
departed when we arrived; French camions and 
American motor trucks had carried them away 
to temporary asylums beyond the limit of the 
, shelling, and for us there was abundant accom- 
modation — seats at the common dining table, 
chambers on the second floor, and standing 
room in the deep wine cellars down below if we 
cared to occupy them when the bombardment 
became heavier or when hostile aeroplanes cir- 
cled over to drop down bombs. The members 
of the menage, as we learned later, slept reg- 
ularly down among the casks and wine bottles, 
[89] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

because nearly every night for a week past 
enemy airmen had been circHng about doing 
what hurt they could to the town and its re- 
maining inhabitants. 

From the single shattered window of the 
bedroom to which I was assigned I could look 
out and down across the narrow roadway upon 
a smaller house which had caught the full 
force of a big shell. The thing must have hap- 
pened within a day or two, for the splintered 
woodwork and caved-in masonry had not yet 
begun to wear the weathered, crumbly look 
that comes to debris after a few weeks of ex- 
posure in this rainy climate, and there was a 
fresh powdering of dust upon the mass of 
wreckage before the door. Curiously enough 
the explosive which had reduced the interior of 
the building to a jumble of ruination left most 
of the roof rafters intact, and to them still ad- 
hered tiles in a sort of ordered pattern, with 
gaps between the red squares, so that the efifect 
might be likened to a kind of lacy architectural 
lingerie. 

Any moment similar destruction might be 
visited upon the hotel opposite, but, despite 
the constant and the imminent danger, the 
big-bodied, broad-faced proprietor and his trim 
small wife were seemingly as tranquil as though 
they lived where the roar of guns was never 
heard. The man who looks upon the French 
as an excitable race has only to come here now, 
to this land, to learn his error and to realise 
[90] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

that beneath, their surface emotionalism they 
have splendid reserve forces of resolution and 
fortitude. By my way of reasoning, it is with 
these people not merely a case of getting used 
to a thing — it is something more than that, 
something deeper than that. It is a pure, 
clean courage cast in the matrix of a patient 
heroism which buoys them up to carry on the 
ordinary undertakings of life amid conditions 
abnormal and disordered to the point of being 
almost intolerable when endured for weeks and 
months and years on end. 

Having established ourselves, we set about 
the task of securing the coveted transportation 
up to the vicinity of the planes of contact be- 
tween the Allies and the enemy. The shelling 
had somewhat abated since our arrival, so we 
made so bold as to trudge across town to the 
railroad station, encountering but few persons 
on the way. In the immediate neighbourhood 
of the station the evidences of recent strafing 
were thicker even than in other parts of the old 
city. Where an hour before a shell had blown 
two loitering French soldiers to bits, a shattered 
stone gateway and a wide hole in the ground 
and a great smearing of moist red stains upon 
the upheaved earth spelled the tale of what had 
happened plainly enough. A withered old man 
was doing his feeble best to patch together the 
split and sundered planks of the gate; the 
bodies, what was left of them, had been re- 
moved by a burial squad. 

[91] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

At the railroad terminal there was pressing 
need for everything that went on wheels, and 
of a certainty there was nothing in the nature 
of a self-propelled vehicle available for the use 
of three men who came bearing no order that 
would give them the right to commandeer gov- 
ernment equipment. So our next hope, and 
seemingly our last one, lay in the French. At 
a certain place we found numbers of kindly 
and sympathetic oflficers with staff markings on 
their collars, who professed to be glad to see 
us, at the same time expressing a polite surprise 
that a trio of unannounced American newspaper 
men should have dropped in upon them, seem- 
ingly out of the shell-harassed skies above. 

But when we suggested we would appreciate 
the loan of an automobile and with the auto- 
mobile an officer to escort us up to the battle 
front they lifted eyebrows, shoulder blades and 
arms toward heaven, all in the same movement 
signifying chagrin and regret. What we asked 
was quite impossible, considering the exigencies 
and emergencies of . the moment. The most 
formidable engagement that ever had been or 
perhaps ever would be was in midblast. Every 
available bit of motive power was required; 
every available man was required. 

Besides, the roads, as doubtless we knew, 
were blocked with reenforcements hurrying up 
to support the hard-pressed British north of 
the Aisne. Any other time, yes. But now — 
no, and once again, no. We were quite free 
[92] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

to stay on in Soissons if we cared for a place 
temporarily so unhealthy. We might have 
free access to any of the maps or records on 
hand. We might visit any of the hospitals or 
rest camps in the immediate vicinity. But 
further than that our new friends could not go. 
They added, by way of advice, that our best 
course would be to return straightway to Paris 
and come again when the crisis had passed and 
the sector to the north had somewhat quieted. 

There being nothing else to do, we took a 
walk to think things over. The walk ended at 
our stopping place just as the German guns 
north of us beyond the river resumed their 
afternoon serenade. More refugees were com- 
ing into the town in a long dismal procession 
from Chauny and Ham and Noyon and 
scores of smaller places. Some of them had 
been on the road for twenty-four hours, some 
for as long as forty-eight hours. They had 
rested a while in wrecked and empty villages 
during the preceding night, then had risen at 
daybreak and resumed their heart-breaking pil- 
grimage, with no goal in sight and no destina- 
tion in view, and only knowing that what 
might lie ahead of them could never by any 
chance be half so bad as what the Germans 
were creating behind them. 

At the beginning of this war, in Belgium and 

again in Northern France, not many miles 

from where we then were, I had seen on the 

edges of the vortex of battle and destruction 

[93] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

many sucli eddying, aimless streams of human 
flotsam and jetsam of war; but to one who 
knew the facts of their case the present pHght 
of these poor wanderers had a special appeal. 
For this was the second time they had been 
dispossessed from their small holdings, the 
second time they had fled in huddles like 
frightened sheep before the path of the grey 
invader, the second time all that they owned 
had been swept away and smashed up and 
wasted beyond repairing. 

Driven out of their homes in the first four 
weeks of the war, back in 1914, at the time of 
the great onslaught against Paris, they had been 
kept away from these homes for more than two 
years, all during the German occupation of 
their territory. After the great victory of the 
Allies over von Hindenburg in the Aisne coun- 
try they had returned, tramping back in pairs 
and groups to the sites of their homesteads, 
filled with the tenacious impulse of the French 
peasant and the French villager to reroot him- 
self in his native soil; had returned to find that 
before the Germans retreated beyond the 
Chemin des Dames they, in accordance with 
orders from the all-highest command, sawed 
down the fruit trees in the little orchards and 
burned the houses that had sheltered them, and 
tore up the vines and shovelled dung into the 
drinking wells. 

Nevertheless, the repatriates had set to, 
working like beavers to restore a sorry sem- 
[94] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

blance of the simple frugal communal system 
under which they and their fathers before them 
had existed since the Napoleonic wars. And 
now, just when they were beginning to patch 
together the broken ends of their lives, when 
with aid from the French Government and aid 
from Americans they had cleared and planted 
their devastated fields and had built new habi- 
tations for themselves out of the ruins of the 
old ones, again the enemy had come down 
upon them like a ravening wolf on a fold; and 
again they had run away, deserting all they 
could not carry in their arms or upon their 
backs, and knowing full well in the light of 
past experience that the Germans either would 
garner the work of their hands or else would 
make an utter end of it. 

At a corner just above the hotel we came upon 
a mother and her family of nine. She was less 
than forty years old herself; her husband was 
a soldier at the Front. She wore wooden 
sabots on her feet, and upon her body a tattered, 
sleazy black frock. Her eldest child was fifteen 
years old, her youngest less than six months. 
For the ten of them to travel a distance of 
twelve miles had taken the better part of two 
days and two nights. The woman had contrived 
a sling of an old bed sheet, which passed over 
one of her shoulders and under the other; and 
in this hammock contrivance she had carried 
the youngest child against her bosom, with her 
bodice open at the breast so the baby might 
[95] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

suckle while she pushed a . crippled perambu- 
lator containing the two next youngest bairns. 
The rest of the brood had walked all the way. 
They were wearied beyond description; they 
were incredibly dirty and famishing for want of 
proper sustenance, but not a single one of the 
small wretches who was old enough to speak 
the word failed to murmur "Merci, merci," 
when the neighbours brought them bowls of 
hot soup and gave them sups of warm milk 
and put big slices of bread smeared with jam 
into their dirty, clawlike little hands. 

Having wolfed down the food they squatted, 
all of them, against a house front to wait for 
the camion which would take them to a refuge 
in a Red Cross station a dozen miles away. 
They had to wait a good while, since all the 
available wagons were engaged in performing 
similar merciful offices for earlier arrivals. The 
children curled up in little heaps like kittens 
and went to sleep, but the mother sat on a 
stone doorstep with her babe against her bare 
flesh, over her heart, to keep it warm, and 
stared ahead of her with eyes which expressed 
nothing save a dumb, numbed resignation. 

An old priest in a black robe came along and 
he stopped, being minded, I think, to utter 
some message of comfort to this wife of a 
soldier of France, and in her way, I say, as 
valorous a soldier as her husband could be, 
did he wear twenty decorations for bravery. 
But either the priest could find no words to 
196] 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF BATTLE 

say or the words choked in his throat. Above 
her drooped head he made with his hand the 
sign of the cross in the air and went away. And 
as I stood looking on I did in my heart what 
any man with blood in his veins would have 
done had he been there in my stead — I con- 
signed to the uttermost depths of perdition 
the soul of the Brute of Prussia whose diseased 
ambition brought to pass this thing and a mil- 
lion things like unto it. 



imi 



CHAPTER V 
SETTING A TRAP FOR OPPORTUNITY 

HAD we waited that night for Oppor- 
tunity to knock at our door I am 
inclined to think we might be wait- 
ing yet. We went out and we set 
a trap for Opportunity, and we caught her. 
No matter how or whence, the chance we cov- 
eted for a hft to the battle came to us before 
the night was many hours old. But before the 
design assumed shape we were to meet as 
blithe a young Britisher as ever I have seen, 
in the person of one Captain Pepper, a red- 
cheeked Yorkshireman in his early twenties, a 
fit and proper type of the men England has 
sent out to officer her forces overseas. 

One of our Red Cross ambulances, while 
scouting out toward Noyon that afternoon, 
picked him up as he trudged up the road alone, 
with a fresh machine-gun wound through the 
palm of his right hand and his cap on the back 
of his head. His wound had been tied up at a 
casualty-dressing station and he had set out 
then to walk a distance of twenty-odd kilo- 
[98] 



SETTING A TRAP FOR OPPORTUNITY 

metres to Soissons, where he was told he might 
find a hospital to shelter him. 

He dined with us, along with the ambulance 
driver who brought him in; and afterward he 
insisted on sitting a while with us, though he 
had been fighting day and night almost con- 
tinuously since the beginning of the battle and 
plainly was far spent from fatigue and lack of 
sleep. So far as I might judge, though, he did 
not have a nerve in his body. Gesturing with 
his swathed hand he told us not what he him- 
self had done — somehow he managed in his 
self-effacing way to steer away from the per- 
sonal note in his recital — but mainly about the 
stupendous tragedy in which he had played 
his part. Considering him as he sat there on a 
broken sofa with his long legs outstretched 
before a wood fire, one could not doubt that 
it had been a creditable part. 

We gathered that in the second day of the 
fighting, as the English fell back before over- 
whelming odds but fighting for every inch, he 
became separated from his company. Next 
morning he found himself without a command 
in the heels of the orderly retreat and had of- 
fered himself for service to the first superior 
officer he* met.' Thereupon he was put in charge 
of Of mixed detachment of two hundred men — 
gathered up anyhow and anywhere — and with 
his motley outfit had been told off to hold a 
strip of woods somewhere south of Chauny. 
Under him, he said, were stragglers cut off from 
[99] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

half a dozen battered line regiments, and along 
with these, cooks, wagon drivers, engineers, 
oflScers' servants and stretcher bearers. In 
front of the squad, beyond the woods, was a 
strip of marsh, and this natural barrier gave 
them an advantage which, plus pluck, enabled 
them to beat off not one but several oncoming 
waves of Germans. 

*'We had machine guns, luckily enough," he 
said; "and, my word, but we gave the beggars 
a proper drubbing ! We piled them up in heaps 
along the edges of that bally old bog. Every- 
where along the Front — where we were and 
everywhere else, too, from what I can hear — 
they have outnumbered us four or five to one, 
but I'm quite sure we've killed or wounded 
ten of them for every man of ours that has 
been laid out since this show started four days 
ago. 

"Well, that's all, except that this morning 
about ten o'clock I was hit and had to quit and 
come away, because you see I wouldn't be 
much use with one hand out of commission and 
bleeding all over the shop — would I now? I'm 
sorry to have to leave the chaps — they were a 
sporting lot; but since I had to stop a bullet 
I'm glad I've got a nice clean cushy wound. I 
shall be glad to get a taste of Blighty too; I'm 
a bit fagged, as you might say." 

His head nodded forward on his chest when 
he got this far, and his limbs relaxed. 

He protested, though, against being bundled 

[100] 



SETTING A TRAP FOR OPPORTUNITY 

off to bed, saying he was quite comfortable and 
that his hand scarcely pained him at all, but 
the man who had brought him took him away. 
As for Carroll and Green and me, we slept that 
night, what sleeping we did, with our clothes 
on us, ready to rise and hunt the wine cellar if 
anything of a violently unpleasant nature oc- 
curred over our heads. During the hours before 
daylight there was a spirited spell of banging 
and crashing somewhere in the town, and not 
so far away either, if one might judge by the 
volume of the tumult, which rattled the empty 
casement frame alongside my bed and made 
the ancient house to rock and creak; but when 
dawn came the gables above us were still intact 
and we were enjoying our beauty sleep in the 
calm which succeeded the gust of shelling or of 
bombing or whatever it was. 



[ 101 ] 



CHAPTER VI 
THROUGH THE BATTLE'S FRONT DOOR 

IMMEDIATELY after breakfast, in accord- 
ance with a plan already formulated, we 
quietly took possession of one of those 
small American-made cars, the existence of 
which has been responsible for the addition of 
an eighth joke to the original seven jokes in 
the world. We didn't know it then, but for 
us the real adventure was just starting. There 
were four of us in the flivver — the driver, a 
young American in uniform, whose duties were 
of such a nature that he travelled on a roving 
commission and need necessarily report to none 
concerning his daily movements; and for pas- 
sengers, our own three selves. For warrant to 
fare abroad we had a small American flag painted 
on the glass wind shield, one extra tire, and an 
order authorising us to borrow gasoline — sim- 
ply these and nothing more. Very unostenta- 
tiously we rode out of Soissons, steering a north- 
westerly course. We might not know exactly 
where we were going or when we should be 
back, but we were on our way. 

[ 102] 



THROUGH THE BATTLe's FRONT DOOR 

At the same time, be it here said, there was 
method of a sort in our scheme of things, for 
we were aiming, as closely as we might, at the 
point where approximately the main/ French 
command jointed on to the right wing of the 
British, we figuring that at the junction place, 
where the overlapping and intermingled areas 
of control met, and more especially in a con- 
fused period when one army was falling back 
and the other bringing up its reserves, we stood 
a better chance in our credential-less and un- 
accredited state of wriggling on up from the 
back lines to the Front than would elsewhere 
be possible. 

We reckoned the prospect after this fashion: 
If the French find us traversing the forbidden 
lands they may take it for granted that the 
British permitted us to pass. If we fall under 
the eyes of British guardians of the trail they 
are equally likely to assume that the French let 
us through. And so it turned out; which I claim 
is added proof that the standing luck of the 
American newspaper reporter on a difficult as- 
signment is not to be discounted. 

In stock we had one trump card, and only 
one, and we played it many a time during that 
somewhat crowded day. All of us were in 
khaki with tin helmets upon our heads and gas 
masks swung over our shoulders. The heavy 
trench coats in which we were bundled pre- 
vented betrayal to the casual eye of the fact 
that none of us wore badges denoting rank, 

[ 103] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

upon our collars or shoulder straps. Out- 
fitted thus we might have been major gener- 
als or we might have been second lieuten- 
ants of the American Expeditionary Forces. 
Who, on a cursory scrutiny of us, was to 
say.? 

So we decided among ourselves that ours must 
be a role suggestive of great personal importance 
and urgent business. Did any wayside sen- 
tinel, whether British or French, move out 
upon the crown of the road as though he meant 
to halt us, one of us, with an authoritative arm, 
would wave him clear of our path and we would 
go flitting imperiously by as though the officious- 
ness of underlings roused in us only a passing 
annoyance. It proved a good trick. It may 
never work again in this war, but I bear witness 
that it has worked once. 

In the very first leg of this expedition good 
old Madame Bonnea venture stood our. friend. 
The River Aisne skirts the city of Soissons. 
At the far side of the bridge, spanning the 
stream, which bridge we must cross, stood a 
French noncom, charged, as we knew, with the 
duty of examining the passes of those outbound. 
If we disregarded his summons to halt, com- 
plications of a painful nature would undoubtedly 
ensue. But as the car slowed up, all of us with 
our fingers figuratively crossed, he either recog- 
nised the driver as one who passed him often 
or was impressed by our bogusly impressive 
mien, or possibly accepted the painted flag on 

[ 104 ] 



THROUGH THE BATTLe's FRONT DOOR 

Tin Lizzie's weather-beaten countenance as 
warrant of our authenticity. 

As he waved to us to proceed and then came 
to a salute, we, returning the salute in due 
form, were uttering three silent but nonethe- 
less vehement cheers. I think we also shook 
hands. We were past the first and by long 
side the most formidable barrier. The farther we 
proceeded toward the battle the greater would 
be our chances of proceeding, it being gen- 
erally assumed that no one gets very deeply 
into the district of active hostilities unless he 
has a proper errand there and has proved it to 
the satisfaction of the highway warders behind. 
' Through several villages that were reduced 
by shell fire to litter heaps and tenanted only 
by detachments of French soldiers we passed. 
Next we skirted up the sides of a steep hill and 
rounded the crest to where, spread out before 
our eyes, was a glorious panorama of the ter- 
rain below and beyond. 

We drew in our breaths. Each one of us had 
seen something of the panoply of warfare in 
the making, but nothing in my own experience 
since Belgium in 1914 had equalled this. All 
the world appeared to have put on cartridge 
belts and gone to war. As far as the eye could 
reach, away off yonder to where sky line and 
earth line met behind the dust screen, cavalry, 
artillery, infantry, supply trains, munition 
trains, and all imaginable branches of the 
portable machinery of an army were in sight 
[105] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

and in motion. Their masses hid the earth 
with a shifting pattern as though a vast blue- 
grey carpet were magically weaving itself. 
Overhead, singly, in pairs and in formations, 
like flights of wild fowl, the scout planes, the 
observation planes and the battle planes went 
winging. They were like silver gulls escorting 
limitless schools of porpoise through placid 
waters. 

Usually there is a seemingly interminable 
confusion in the vision of a great force upon 
the forward go. To the lay eye it appears that 
the whole movement has got itself inextricably 
snarled. This line travels one course, that line 
goes in exactly the opposite direction, a third 
one is bisecting the first two at cross angles. 
But here one great compelling influence was 
sending all the units forward along a common 
current. The heavy vehicles held to the roads 
which threaded the plain; the infantry took 
short cuts across lots, as it were; the cavalry 
traversed the fields and penetrated the occa- 
sional thickets; the sky craft trod the alleys of 
the air — but they all headed toward the same 
unseen goal. There was no doubt about it — 
France was hurrying up a most splendid army 
to reenforce the hard-pressed defenders of 
French soil, where the Hun pushed against the 
line of the inward-bending and battered but 
yet unbroken British battalions. 

We coasted down off the heights into the 
plateau, and now as we came in among them 
[106] 



THROUGH THE BATTLE S FRONT DOOR 

we had opportunity for appraising the temper 
of those men hurrying on their forward march 
to the kilHng pits. Who says France is war 
wearied or that her sons are tired of fighting? 
No suggestion was there here of dumb oxen 
driven to slaughter. Why, these men were like 
bridegrooms bound for the marriage feast. 
They sang as they marched or as they rode. 
Usually what they sang was a snatch of some 
rollicking chanson, and through the dirt masks 
they grinned into our faces as we went slithering 

There were hails and friendly gestures for 
us. It might be a boy private with a sprig of 
early spring wild flowers jauntily stuck in his 
cap who waved at us. It might be a cook bal- 
ancing himself on the tailboard of a travelling 
field kitchen who raised a sweaty visage from 
his steaming soup caldron and made friendly 
circles in the air with a dripping iron instrument 
that was too big for a spoon and too small for 
a spade; or it might be a gunner on a bouncing 
ammunition truck with enough of potential 
death and disaster bestowed under his sprawled 
legs to blow him and, incidentally, us into ten 
million smithereens if ever it went off. 

Kilometre after kilometre we skihooted 
through the press, and it was a comic thing to 
see how a plodding regiment would swing over 
or a battery would bounce and jolt off the 
fairway into the edges of the ditch at the in- 
sistent toot-toot of our penny whistle of a 
[107] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

horn to let us by. It made one think of whales 
making room in a narrow tideway for an im- 
pudent black minnow to pass. And always 
there was the drone of the questing aeroplanes 
overhead and the thunderous roaring of the 
guns in front. We overtook one train of supply 
trucks with the markings of the U. S. A. and 
manned by dusty lads in the khaki fustian of 
Yankeeland — evidence that at least one arm 
of our service would have a hand in the epochal 
task confronting our allies. All the rest of it 
was French. 

For us there was no halt until we reached 
Blerencourt. Now this place was a place 
having a particular interest for us, since it was 
at Blerencourt that the organisation known as 
the American Fund for French Wounded, 
which is headed by Miss Anne Morgan and 
which has for its field personnel American wom- 
en exclusively, had during the past nine months 
centred its principal activities. 

In the outskirts of the town, now evacuated 
of almost all its civilian residents, stand the 
massive stone gateways and the dried moat 
of the magnificent chateau of Blerencourt, 
which was destroyed by the peasants in the time 
of the Terror and never rebuilt. What remains 
constitutes one of the most picturesque physical 
reminders of the French Revolution that is 
to be found in the country to-day. We rode 
under the arched stone portals — and lo, it was 
almost as though we had come into the midst 

[108] 



THROUGH THE BATTLe's FRONT DOOR 

of a smart real-estate development somewhere 
on Long Island within easy communicating dis- 
tance of New York City. 

French francs, provided by the state, and 
American dollars, donated by the folks back 
home, had been used under American super- 
vision to construct a model colony upon the 
exact site of the ancient castle of some vanished 
noble family of the old regime. There was a 
model barracks, a model dormitory, a model 
schoolhouse, two model cottages and an office 
building that was a model among models — all 
built of planking, all glistening and smart with 
fresh paint, all with neat doorsteps in front of 
them and trim flower plots and vegetable gar- 
dens about them. There was a chicken house 
and a chicken run, dotted with the shapes of 
plump fowls. There was a storeroom piled 
high with clothing and food sent over from 
America to the A. p. F. W. for distribution 
among destitute natives of the devastated dis- 
tricts, of which this, until a year ago, had been 
the centre. 

These incongruously modern structures snug- 
gled right up under the venerable walls of the 
battlements. Indeed several of the buildings 
were cunningly built into the ruins, so that 
on one side the composite edifice would show a 
withered stone face, with patches of furze 
growing in the chinks of the crumbled masonry 
like moles on the forehead of a withered crone, 
and on the other would present a view of a 
[109] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

smart cottage with a varnished shingle roof and 
a painted front door which apparently had just 
arrived from some planing mill in the States. 
Underneath the floor was a cellar four hundred 
years old, but the curtains in the window had 
seemingly been cut and stitched only yesterday. 
Somehow, though, the blended effect was im- 
mensely effective. It made me think of Home- 
dale-on-the-Sound grafted upon a background 
of Louis the Grand; and for a fact that was 
exactly what it was. 

This creation, representing as it did nine 
months of hard work on the part of devoted 
American women, had been closed only the 
day before. It stayed in operation until it 
seemed probable that the German legions might 
penetrate this far south in their effort to ford 
the River Oise. The little pupils of the kinder- 
garten had been sent away in trucks, the main 
dormitory had been turned into a temporary 
resting place for refugees, and the American 
ranges in the kitchen had done valiant service 
in the cooking of hot meals for exliausted women 
and children tramping in from the north and 
west. Before the managers and teachers left 
at dusk of the preceding evening two crippled 
French soldiers, specially detailed for work 
here by the government, had been 'assigned to 
place vessels of kerosene in each building, with 
instructions to fire the oil at the first signs of 
approaching Germans. 

The cans of inflammables were still in their 

[1101 



THROUGH THE BATTLE S FRONT DOOR 

places when we arrived and the maimed watch- 
men, one of them a one-armed man and the 
other a one-legged, had camped all night on 
the premises ready on warning to apply the 
torch and destroy this frontier outpost of Amer- 
ican charity and American efficiency. But in 
the forenoon word was come that the enemy 
had been brought to bay seven miles away and 
that he might not break through the British- 
French line. He did break through, but that is 
another story. So Mrs. Dike, of New York, 
and Miss Blagden, of Philadelphia, two of Miss 
Morgan's assistants, had motored in from be- 
low, filled with thanksgiving that the patient 
work of their hands and their hearts would 
almost certainly be spared. 

While Mrs. Dike, with tears in her eyes, v/as 
telling us of the things that had been accom- 
plished here and while the troopers poured in 
unceasing streams along the main road beyond 
the gateway, a handful of belated refugees 
crept in under the weathered armorial bearings 
on the keystone of the archway, to be fed and 
cared for and then sent along in the first empty 
truck that came by going toward Soissons. 

In this group of newcomers was an elderly 
little man in a worn high hat and a long frock 
coat with facings of white dust upon its shiny 
seams, who looked as though he might be the 
mayor of some inconsequential village. He 
carried two bulging valises and a huge um- 
brella. With him was his wife, and she had in 
[111] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

one hand a cage housing two frightened canaries 
and under the other arm a fat grey tabby cat 
which bhnked its sHtted eyes contentedly. 

The most pitiable figure of them all to my 
way of thinking was an old woman — yes, a 
very old woman — she must have been all of 
eighty. Alongside one of the buildings I came 
upon her sitting in a huddle of her most treas- 
ured possessions. She was bent forward, with 
her gnarled hands folded in the lap of her dress, 
which was silk and shiny, for naturally when 
she fled from her home she had put on her back 
the best that she owned. Under the cope of a 
queer little old black bonnet with faded purple 
cloth flowers upon it her scanty hair lay in 
thin neat folds, as white and as soft as silk floss. 
Her feet in stiff, new, black shoes showed be- 
neath her broad skirts. Her face, caving in 
about the mouth where her teeth were gone and 
all crosshatched with wrinkles, was a sweet, 
kindly, most gentle old face — the kind of face 
that we like to think our dead-and-gone grand- 
mothers must have had. 

She sat there ever so patiently in the soft 
sunlight, waiting for the truck which would 
carry her away to some strange place among 
stranger folk. When I drew near to her, wishing 
with all my heart that I knew enough of her 
tongue to express to her some of the thoughts 
I was thinking, she looked up at me and smiled 
a friendly little smile, and then raising her 
hands in a gesture of resignation dropped them 
[112] 



THROUGH THE BATTLe's FRONT DOOR 

again in her lap. But it was only with her Hps 
that she smiled, for all the time her chin was 
quivering and her faded old blue eyes were brim- 
ming with a sorrow that was past telling in 
words. • 

She still sat there as we got into our car and 
drove off toward the battle. Looking back, the 
last thing I saw before we rounded the corner 
of the wall was her small black shape vivid in 
the sunshine. And I told myself that if I were 
an artist seeking to put upon canvas an image 
that would typify and sum up the spirit of 
embattled France to-day I would not paint a 
picture of a wounded boy soldier; nor yet one 
of a winged angel form bearing a naked sword; 
nor yet one of the full-throated cock of France, 
crowing his proud defiance. I would paint a 
picture of that brave little old withered woman, 
with the lips that smiled and the chin that quiv- 
ered the while she smiled. 



[113] 



CHAPTER VII 
AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

WHEN tlie last preceding chapter of 
mine ended I had reached a point 
in the narrative where our little 
party of four, travelling in our 
own little tin flivverette, were just leaving 
Blerincourt, being bound still farther west and 
aiming, if our abiding luck held out, to reach 
the front of the Front — which, I may add, we 
did. 

To be exact we were leaving not one Blerin- 
court but three. First, Blerincourt, the town, 
with its huddle of villagers' homes, housing at 
this moment only French troopers and ex- 
hausted refugees; second, Blerincourt, the castle, 
a mouldering relic of a great house, testifying 
by its massive empty walls and its tottering 
ruin of a gateway to the fury which laid hold 
on the peasants of these parts in the days of 
the Terror; and, third, Blerincourt, the model 
colony of model cottages, which for us held the 
most personal interest, since it was here the 
American women of the American Fund for 

[114] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

French Wounded had during the previous nine 
months centred their activities relating to the 
repopulating of districts in the Aisne country, 
now for the second time evacuated and given 
over again to the savage maHce of the boche. 

Behind us as we swung into the main high- 
way lay this grouped composition of the 
wrecked chateau, the tiny old houses of weath- 
ered grey stone and the little frame domiciles, 
smart and glistening with fresh paint and fresh 
varnishing. Before us, within a space of time 
and distance to be spanned by not more than 
half an hour of steady riding, was somewhere 
the problematical doorway through which we 
hoped to pass into the forward lines of that 
battle which the historians of the future, I dare 
say, will call merely the Great Battle, knowing 
their readers require no added phraseology to 
distinguish it from the lesser engagements of 
this war — or in fact of any war. 

We did not ask our way of any whom we 
met, either of those going ahead of us or those 
coming back in counter streams. To begin 
with, we deemed it inexpedient to halt long 
enough to give to any person in authority a 
chance for questioning the validity of our 
present mission, since, as I already have ex- 
plained, we carried no passes qualifying us to 
traverse this area; and besides there was no 
need to ask. The route was marked for us by 
signs and sounds without number, plainer than 
any mileposts could have been : By the columns 
[115] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of Frenchmen hurrying up to reenforce the 
decimated British who until now, at odds of 
one to five, had borne the buffets of the tre- 
mendous German onslaught; by the never- 
ending, never-slackening roar of the heavy 
guns; by the cloud of dust and powder, forming 
a wall against two sides of the horizon, which 
mounted upward to mingle its hazes with the 
hazes of the soft spring afternoon; by the thin 
trickling lines of light casualty cases, "walking 
wounded," in the vernacular of the Medical 
Corps — meaning by that men who, having had 
first-aid bandages applied to their hurts at for- 
ward casualty stations, were tramping rearward 
to find accommodations for themselves at field 
hospitals miles away. 

At once we were in a maze of traffic to be 
likened to the conditions commonly prevalent 
on lower Fifth- Avenue in the height of the 
Christmas-shopping season, but with two dis- 
tinctions: Here on this chalk- white highroad 
the movement, nearly all of it, was in one direc- 
tion; and instead of omnibuses, delivery vans, 
carriages and private automobiles, this vast 
caravansary was made up of soldiers afoot, sol- 
diers mounted and soldiers riding; of batteries, 
horse drawn and motor drawn; of pontoon 
bridges in segments; of wagon trains, baggage 
trains, provision trains and munition trains; 
of field telephone, field telegraph and field wire- 
less outfits upon wheels; of all the transportable 
impedimenta and all the myriad items of mov- 
[116] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

able macliinery pertaining to the largest army 
that has crossed a corner of France since the 
days of the first great invasion more than three 
.and a half years before. 

There were ambulances past counting; there 
were big covered camions in numbers sufficient 
to fit out a thousand circuses; there were horses 
and donkeys and mules of all the known sizes 
and colours; there were so many human shapes 
in uniforms of horizon blue that the eye grew 
weary and the brain rebelled at the task of 
trying, even approximately, to compute esti- 
mates of the total strength of the man power 
here focussed. 

Through all this, weaving in and out, our 
impudent little black bug of a car scuttled 
along, with its puny horn honking a constant 
and insolent demand for clear passage. At a 
faster gait than anything in sight except the 
cruising aeroplanes above, we progressed upon 
our way, with none to halt us and none to 
turn us back. Where the dust hung especially 
thick at a crossroads set in the midst of the 
wide plain we almost struck three pedestrians 
who seemingly did not heed our hooted warning 
or take notice of it until we were right upon 
them. As they jumped nimbly for the ditch 
we could see that all these had staff markings 
at their throats, and that one, the eldest of the 
three, a stoutish gentleman with a short grizzled 
beard, wore three stars in a triangle upon his 
collar. Tin Lizzie had almost achieved the dis- 
[117] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

___^ Si— 

tinction for herself of having run down a major 
general of France. 

We did not stop, though, to offer apologies or 
explanations. With rare sagacity our driver 
threw her wide open and darted into the fog, 
to take temporary shelter behind a huge supply 
wagon, which vehicle we followed for a while 
after the fashion of a new-foaled colt trailing 
its dam. 

Proofs began to multiply that we were near- 
ing the zone of live combat. Until now the 
only British soldiers we had seen were slightly 
wounded men bound afoot for the rear. All at 
once we found ourselves passing half a company 
of khaki-clad Britishers who travelled across a 
field over a course parallel to the one we were 
taking and who disappeared in a hazel copse 
beyond. Rifle firing could be heard somewhere 
on the far side of the thicket. At a barked 
command from an officer who clattered up on 
horseback a battery of those doughty little 
seventy-fives, which the French cherish so 
highly, and with such just cause, was leaving 
the road and taking station in a green meadow 
where the timid little wild flowers of a mild 
March showed purple and yellow in the rutted 
and trampled grass. 

With marvellous haste the thing was accom- 
plished almost instantly. The first gun of the 
five squatted in the field with its nozzle slanting 
toward the northwest, and behind it its four 
companions stood, all with their short noses 

[118] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

pointing at precisely the same angle, like bird 
dogs on a back stand. Suddenly they did what 
well-broken bird dogs never do — they barked, 
one after the other. Almost before the whining 
whistle of the shells had died away the gunners 
were moving their pieces to a point closer up 
behind a screen of poplars and sending a 
second yelping salvo of shots toward an unseen 
target. 

We became aware that the component units 
of the army were now quitting the roadway to 
take positions in the back lines. Indeed those 
back lines formed themselves while we watched. 
One battery after another swung oflf to the right 
or to the left and came into alignment, so that 
soon we rode between double rows of halted 
guns. With our canes we could have touched 
the artillerymen piling heaps of projectiles in 
convenient hollows in the earth close up to the 
edges of the road. Big covered wains dis- 
charged dusty infantrymen, who, pausing only 
long enough to unbuckle their packs from their 
shoulders and throw them under the hoods of 
the wagons, went at a shambling half-trot 
through the meadow. Cavalrymen, not dis- 
mounted, as they had mainly been during these 
dragging winter months of warfare that was 
stationary and static, but with their booted 
feet once more in their stirrups, cantered off, 
bound presumably for the thin woodlands 
which rimmed the plateau where the terrain 
broke away to the banks of the River Oise. 
[119] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Here again at last was war in the open, as 
different from battle in the trenches as football 
is from trap shooting. The action of it was 
spread out before one's eyes, not masked in 
mud ambuscades. Each instant our eyes be- 
held some new and stirring picture, standing 
out by reason of its swift vigour from the 
vaster panorama of which it was a part. What 
I had seen of battle formations in the preceding 
three weeks had made me think mainly of sub- 
way diggin's or of construction work for a 
new railroad or of engineering operations in 
connection with a dam, say, or a dike. What 
I saw now most vividly suggested old-time 
battle pictures by Meissonier or Detaille. War, 
for the moment at least, had gone back to the 
aspect which marked it before both sides dug 
themselves in to play the game of counter- 
blasting with artillery and nibbling the foe's 
toes with raids and small forays. 

Of another thing we were likewise aware, and 
the realisation of the fact cheered us mightily. 
Among the blue uniforms of the French the 
greenish buff of the British showed in patches 
of contrasting colour that steadily increased in 
size and frequency. By rare good luck we had 
entered the advanced positions at the identical 
place for which, blindly, we had been seeking — 
the place where the most westerly sector of the 
French left wing touched the most easterly 
sector of the British right wing; and better 
than that, the place where the French strength 

[ 120] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

hurrying up to reenforce and if need be replace 
decimated divisions of their allies was joined 
on to and fused in with the retiring British 
Army, which, during the preceding three days, 
had sustained the main force of the German 
offensive. It was here if anywhere that we 
could count with the best prospects of success 
upon boring straight through to the Front, the 
reason being that the French might assume the 
British had given us passage and the British 
might assume the French had let us by. 

There were perhaps three more miles of brisk 
travelling for us, during which I am sure that 
I saw more than ever I have seen in any three 
miles that ever I traversed in my life; and at 
the end of that stretch we could tell that we 
had well-nigh outrun the forward crest of the 
French ground swell and had come into the 
narrower backwash of the British retreat. A 
retreat of sorts it may have been, but a rout 
it most assuredly was not. We saw companies 
reduced to the strength of ten or twelve or 
twenty men under command of noncommis- 
sioned officers or possibly of a single lieutenant. 
We saw individual privates and we saw privates 
in squads of two or three or half a dozen men, 
who in the terrific fighting had become sepa- 
rated from a command, which possibly had been 
scattered but which it was more likely had been 
practically wiped out. Such men were not 
stragglers, nor were they malingerers; they 
were survivors, atoms flung backward out of 
[121] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

the raging inferno which had swallowed up 
whole regiments and whole brigades. 

And we took note that every single man of 
these broken and decimated detachments was in 
good humour, though dog tired; and that every 
single one of them had kept his accoutrements 
and his rifle; and that every single one of 
them, whether moving under orders or acting 
upon his own initiative, was intent upon just 
two things and two things only — to get back into 
the maelstrom from which temporarily he had 
been spewed forth, and pump more lead into the 
living tidal wave of grey coats. Some that we 
overtook were singing, and singing lustily too. 
Than this no man could ask to see a finer 
spectacle of fortitude, of pluck and of discipline, 
and I am sure that in his heart each one of us, 
while having no doubt of the outcome of the 
fiery test, prayed that our own soldiers, when 
their time of trial by battle came, might under 
reverses and under punishment acquit them- 
selves as well as had these British veterans, 
Yorkshire and Bedfordshire and Canada, who 
came trudging along behind us, swallowing our 
dust. What impressed us as most significant 
of all was that only once that day did we see a 
scrap of personal equipment that had been cast 
aside. This was a cartridge belt of English 
make, with its pouches empty and its tough 
leather torn almost in two, lying like a broken- 
backed brown snake in a ditch. 

Already from wounded English soldiers and 

[ 122] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

from exhausted English hospital workers whom 
we had seen back in Soissons we comprehended 
a measure of appreciation of what these bat- 
tered fragments of the forces had been called 
upon to endure during four days and five 
nights. We knew as surely as though we had 
stopped to take down the story of each one of 
the wearied, cheerful, resolute chaps, that they 
had their fill of killing the enemy and of seeing 
their mates about them blown to bits by high 
explosives or mowed down by rifle fire. I re- 
called what a bedraggled young surgeon, a 
Highlander by his accent, had said the night 
before: 

"I crave never to pass through this experi- 
ence again. I have seen so much of death since 
this battle started that I have in me now con- 
tempt not only for death but for life too., I 
thought last year on the Somme I saw real 
fighting. Man, it was but child's play to what 
I saw the day before yesterday! 

"From the casualty dressing post where I 
was on duty I could see the fighting spread out 
before me like a cinema show. For our shelter 
— we were in a concrete dugout — was in the 
side of a hill with a wide sweep of lowland 
below and beyond us, and it was here in this 
valley that the Germans came at our people. 
Between jobs in the operating theatre — and 
God knows we had enough of them — I would 
slip out for a breath of air, and then I could 
watch through my glasses what went on. 
[ 123 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

"In wave after wave the Germans came on, 
marching close together in numbers incredible. 
They were like ants; they were like flies; like 
swarming grasshoppers. At first they tried a 
frontal attack against our trenches, but even 
the Germans, driven on as they must have 
been like cattle to the slaughter, couldn't stand 
what they got there. Within two hours they 
charged three times! Each time they fell back 
again, and each time they left their dead lying 
so thickly behind that finally the ground 
seemed as though it were covered with a grey 
carpet. 

"That happened in the first day of their 
drive against our part of the line, which was 
the third line back, the two front lines having 
already been taken by them. So on the next 
day, which was the day before yesterday, they 
worked their way round to the south a bit and 
tried a flanking advance. Then it was I saw 
this, just as I'm telling it to you. I saw them 
caught by our machine-gun fire and piled up, 
heap on heap, until there was a windrow of 
them before the British trenches that must have 
been six feet high. 

"They went back, but they came again and 
again, and they kept on coming. They climbed 
right over that wall of their own dead — I my- 
self watched them scrambling up among the 
bodies — and they slid down on the other side 
and ran right into the wire entanglements, 
where those of them that were killed hung in 

[124] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

the wires like garments drying on a line. They 
died there in such numbers that they fairly 
clogged the wires. And still they kept on 
coming. 

"When our line began to bend in, farther 
away to the west, we got orders to evacuate 
the station; and the men in the trenches where 
I had seen the fighting got orders — what were 
left of them — to fall back too. They were 
Scotchmen, these laddies, and they were fairly 
mad with the fighting. They didn't want to go, 
and they refused to go. I'm told by reliable 
witnesses that their officers had almost to use 
force against them — not to make them keep on 
fighting but to make them quit fighting." 

He looked into the coals of the wood fire and 
shivered. 

"Man, it's not war any more; it's just plain 
slaughter. Mark my word — there'll never be 
another war such as this one has been or an- 
other battle such as the one that still goes on 
yonder. 'Tis not in flesh and blood to endure 
its repetition once the hate has been cooled by 
a taste of peace." 

The men about us for the most part must 
have taken part as actors in scenes such as the 
young surgeon had described as an onlooker. 
But about them there was no sign of reluctance 
or of surcease. We realised as thoroughly as 
though we had been eyewitnesses to their con- 
duct that they had carried on like brave men; 
and without being told we realised, too, that 
[125] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

they were made of the stuff which keeps carry- 
ing on as long as there is Kfe left in it. They 
were of the breed of the bulldog, and clean 
strain, at that. 

Frenchmen grew fewer in number along the 
route we travelled; Britishers became more 
and more numerous. Where byways crossed 
the highroad and in wrecked villages the British 
already had posted military policemen to guide 
the traffic and point out the proper directions 
to bodies of men passing through. Those men 
stood in midroad giving their orders as calmly 
and as crisply as though they had been bobbies 
on the Strand. Even in this emergency John 
Bull's military system did not disintegrate. As 
long as the organism lasted the organisation 
would last too. Nowhere was there any sug- 
gestion of confusion or conflict of will. I am 
prone to think that in the years to come the 
chief outstanding fact about the great spring 
offensive of 1918 will be not the way the Ger- 
mans came forward but the way in which the 
British fell back. 

Until now we had seen only British foot 
soldiers, and once or twice officers in motor 
cars or on horseback; but soon we came upon 
a battery of British light artillery. It was 
jolting across muddy pasture among the stumps 
of apple trees which the Germans with malig- 
nant thoroughness had felled before their big 
retreat of twelve months before. The place 
had been an orchard once. Now it was merely 
[ 126] 



AT THE FRONT OF THE FRONT 

SO much waste land, dedicated to uselessness 
by efficiency and kultur. The trees, as we 
could see, had not been blown down by shell 
fire or hewn down with axes. They had been 
neatly and painstakingly sawed through, clear 
down to the earth. Some of the butts meas- 
ured a foot and a half across, and to have bolls 
of this size, fruit trees in this country must 
have attained great age. 

The battery took position and went into 
immediate action behind a covert of willows 
and scrub at the far side of the ruined orchard. 
At the moment we did not know that the 
thicket was a screen along the southern bank 
of the Oise. At the left of where the guns were 
speaking was a group of empty and shattered 
cottages stretching along a single narrow street 
that ran almost due north and south. Coming 
opposite the foot of this street we glimpsed at 
the other end of it a glint of running water, and 
in the same instant, perhaps two or three miles 
away farther on across the river, we made out 
the twin spires of the cathedral of Noyon, for 
which, as we know, the contending armies had 
striven for forty-eight hours, and which the 
evening before had fallen into the enemy's 
hands. Literally we were at the front of the 
Front. 

East of the clustered houses of the city a 

green hill rose above the tree tops. Across the 

flanks of this hill we saw grey-blue clumps 

moving. At that distance the sight was sug- 

[127] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

gestive of a crawling mass of larvse. Over it 
puffs of smoke, white for shrapnel and black 
for explosives, were bursting. We were too far 
away to observe the effect of this shelling, but 
knew that the crawling grey blanket meant 
Germans advancing in force down into the val- 
ley of the river, and we knew, too, that they 
were being punished by Allied guns as they 
came on to take up their new position. 



[ 128 J 



CHAPTER VIII 
A BRIDGE AND AN AUTOMOBILE TIRE 

CURIOUSLY enough there was at this 
moment and at this place no return fire 
from the enemy. From this we de- 
duced that the infantry in their im- 
petuous onrush had so far outtravelled the 
heavy and more cumbersome arms of their 
service that the artillery had not caught up 
yet. However, a little later projectiles from 
hostile field pieces began to drop on our side 
of the stream. 

Halfway of the length of the street our car 
halted. It did not seem the part of wisdom 
for the four of us to go r.I.ead in a group, so I 
walked the rest of the way to spy out the 
land. 

Behind the shattered stone and plaster houses 
French soldiers were squatted or lying. In the 
hope of finding some one who could speak the 
only language I knew I continued on until I 
came to the last two houses in the row. They 
overhung the riverbank. Beyond them were 
two bridges spanning the little river, one an 
,[129 3 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

old steel bridge witli a concrete roadbed, and 
the other a sagging wooden structure, evidently 
built by soldier hands. 

The mouth of the military bridge was 
stopped with a makeshift barricade thrown to- 
gether any which way. The backbone of the 
barrier was formed of two tree trunks, but 
they were half hidden from sight beneath a 
miscellaneous riffle of upturned motor lorries, 
wheelbarrows and clustered household furni- 
ture, including many mattresses that plainly 
had been filched from the villagers' abandoned 
homes. Midway of the main bridge a handful 
of French engineers were pottering away, 
rather leisurely, I thought, at some job or 
other. Two Tommies were standing behind one 
of the farthermost buildings of the hamlet — a 
building which in happier days had been a cafe. 
Now it was a broken shell, foul inside with a 
litter of Wreckage. The men wore the insignia 
of the Royal Lancers. 

As I approached them they saluted, evidently 
mistaking me, in my trench coat and uniform 
cap, for an American officer. That an Ameri- 
can officer should be in this place, so far away 
from any American troops, did not seem to 
surprise them in the least. 

"What town is this.^^" was my first question. 

"It's called Pontoise, sir," answered one of 
them, giving to the name a literal rendition 
very different from the French fashion of pro- 
nouncing this word. 

[ 130] 



A BRIDGE AND AN AUTOMOBILE TIRE 

"What's going on out yonder on the bridge?" 
I inquired next. 

"The Frenchmen is minin' it to blow it up, 
sir. They mined it once already but the 
charge didn't explode, sir. Now they're goin' 
to give it another try. They'll be letting off 
the charge pretty soon, sir, I think — as soon 
as a few of their men and a few of ours who're 
over on the other bank in them bushes 'ave 
fallen back to this side 'ere." 

"How close are the Germans.'^" I asked. 

I figured they must be uncomfortably close. 
They were. 

"Come along with me, sir, if you don't mind," 
quoth my informant. 

Quite in the most casual way he led me out 
from behind the shelter of the ruined cafe. 
As we quitted its protection I could see over a 
broken garden wall the British battery down 
below at the left, firing as fast as the gunners 
could serve the pieces. Of all the men in sight 
these shirt-sleeved artillerymen were the only 
ones who seemed to have any urgent business 
in hand. 

Together we advanced to the barricade, 
which at the spot where we halted came up to 
our middles. Across the top of it my guide 
extended a soiled hand. 

"The beggars are right there, sir, in them 

bushes; about a 'undred and fifty yards away, 

sir, or two 'undred at the most," he said with 

the manner of a hired guide. "You carn't see 

[131] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

them now, sir, but a bit ago I 'ad a peep at a 
couple of 'em movin' about. The reason they 
ain't firin' over 'ere is because they don't 
Want us to locate 'em, I think, sir." 

"Oh!" I said, like that. "Oh!" 

By mutual but unspoken consent we then 
retired to our former position. The imper- 
turbable Tommy fell back in good order, but 
I think possibly I may have hurried somewhat. 
I always was a fairly brisk walker, anyhow. 

Inside the breached building my companions 
joined me, and while the shells from the bat- 
tery and from the other batteries farther away 
went racketing over us toward Noyon we held 
a consultation of war. Any desire on the part 
of any one to stay and see what might happen 
after the bridge had been blown up was ef- 
fectually squelched by the sudden appearance 
of two British officers coming through the 
village toward us. Did they choose to interro- 
gate us regarding our mission in this parlous 
vicinity there might be embarrassment in the 
situation for us. So we went away from there. 

As we departed from the place a certain 
thing impressed itself upon my consciousness. 
The men about me — the two Tommies cer- 
tainly, the two officers presumably, and prob- 
ably the Frenchmen — ^had but newly emerged 
from hard fighting. Of a surety they would 
very shortly be engaged in more hard fighting, 
striving to prevent the on-moving Germans 
from crossing the river. Over their head shells 

[132] 



A BRIDGE AND AN AUTOMOBILE TIRE 

from their own guns were racking the air. 
Shells from hostile batteries were beginning to 
splatter down just beyond. This then was mere- 
ly an interval, an interlude between acts of a 
most dire and tremendous tragedy. 

And yet so firmly had the chance of death 
and the habit of war become a part of their 
daily and their hourly existence that in this 
brief resting spell they behaved exactly as men 
engaged in some wearing but peaceful labour 
might behave during a nooning in a harvest 
field. No one in sight was crouching in a pos- 
ture of defence, with his rifle gripped in nervous 
hands and his face set and intent. Here were 
being exemplified none of the histrionic prin- 
ciples of applied heroics as we see them on the 
stage. 

The Frenchmen were sprawled at ease be- 
hind the walls, their limbs relaxed, their faces 
betokening only a great weariness. One or two 
actually were asleep with their heads pillowed 
on their arms. Those who spoke did so in 
level, unexcited tones. They might have been 
discussing the veriest commonplaces of life. 
For all I knew to the contrary, they were dis- 
cussing commonplaces. The two British pri- 
vates leaned upon their rifles, with their tired 
legs sagging under them and with cigarette 
ends in their mouths. One of the officers was 
lighting a pipe as we drove past him. One of 
the Frenchmen was gnawing at a knuckle of 
bre^d. 

[ 133] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Indeed there Vv^as notliing about the scene, 
except a knowledge of the immediate proximity 
of German skirmishers, which would serve to 
invest it with one-tenth of the drama that 
marked a hundred other sights we had that day- 
witnessed. Later, though, we learned we had 
blundered by chance upon the very spot where 
the hinge of the greatest battle of history next 
day turned. 

It was south of Noyon at the Pontoise ford 
and at other fords above and below Pontoise 
that the Germans designed to cross the river 
in their onslaught southward against the de- 
fences of Paris. But there they failed, thanks 
be to British desperation and French determi- 
nation; and it was then, according to what 
students of strategy among the Allies say, that 
the hosts of the War Lord altered the plan of 
their campaign and faced about to the west- 
ward in their effort to take Amiens and sunder 
the line of communication between Paris and 
Calais — an effort which still is being made as 
I sit here in Paris writing these pages for the 
mail. 

The day's journey was not over by any man- 
ner of means, but so far as I personally was 
concerned its culminating moment passed when 
I walked out on the bridge timbers with that 
matter-of-fact young Royal Lancer. What fol- 
lowed thereafter was in the nature of a series 
of anticlimaxes, and yet we saw a bookful be- 
fore we rode back to Soissons for a second night 
[134] 



A BRIDGE AND AN AUTOMOBILE TIRE 

under bombardment in that sorely beset and 
beleaguered old city. Before heading back we 
cruised for ten kilometres beyond Noyon, going 
west by south toward Compiegne. 

On this side jaunt we mostly skirted the 
river, which on our bank was comparatively 
calm but which upon the farther bank was 
being contended for at the bayonet's point by 
British and French against Germans. The 
sound of the cannonading never ceased for a 
moment, and as dusk came on the northern 
horizon was lit up with flickering waves of a 
sullen dull red radiance. The nearer we came 
to Compiegne the more numerous were the 
British, not in squads and detachments and 
bits of companies but in regiments and brigades 
which preserved their formations even though 
some of them had been reduced to skeletons of 
their former proportions. In the fields along- 
side the way the artillerymen were throwing up 
earthen banks for the guns; the infantrymen 
were making low sod walls behind which they 
would sleep that night and fight on the morrow. 
From every hand came the smell of brewing 
tea, for, battle or no battle, the Tommy would 
have his national beverage. The troop horses 
were being properly bestowed in the shaggly 
thickets, and camp fires threw off pungent 
smells of wood burning. For the first time in a 
long time the campaign was outdoors, under 
the skies. 

I saw one fagged trooper squatting at the 

[135] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

roadside, with a minute scrap of looking-glass 
balanced before him in the twigs of a bare 
bush, while he painfully but painstakingly was 
shaving himseK in cold ditch water. He had 
fought or marched all day, I imagine; his 
chances of being sent to eternity in piecemeal 
before another sunset were exceedingly good; 
but he would go, tidied and with scraped jowls, 
to whatever fate might await him. And that, 
except for one other small thing, was the most 
typically English thing I witnessed in the shank 
of this memorable evening. 

The other incident occurred after we had 
faced about for our return. In a maze of by- 
roads we got off our course. A lone soldier of 
the Bedfordshires — a man near forty, I should 
say at an offhand guess — was tramping along. 
Our driver halted our car and hailed him. He 
straightened his weary back and came smartly 
to a salute. 

"We've lost our way," explained one of us. 

He smiled at us whimsically. 

"I'm afraid I can't help you, sirs," he said 
in the tones of an educated man. "I've lost 
my own way no less than six times to-day. I 
may add that I'm rather a stranger in these 
parts myself." 

When we got to Blerincourt with an hour of 
daylight and another hour of twilight yet ahead 
of us we turned north toward Chauny, which 
the Germans now held and which the Allies 
were bombarding furiously. We had come to a 

[136] 



A BRIDGE AND AN AUTOMOBILE TIRE 

crossroads just back of a small village, when 
with a low spiteful hiss of escaping air one of 
our rear tires went flat. We stopped to replace 
the damaged tube with a better one. Behind us, 
a quarter of a mile or so away, a British bag- 
gage train was making bivouac for the night. 
Just in front of us a British battery was firing 
over the housetops of the empty village toward 
Chauny. 

We had the car jacked up and the old tire 
off the rim and the new one half on when — 
bang! the heavens and the world seemed td 
come together all about us. What happened 
was that a big shell of high explosives, fired 
from an enemy mortar miles away, had dropped 
within seventy, sixty yards of us in a field; 
what seemed to happen was that a great plug 
was pulled out of the air with a smiting and a 
crashing and a rending. The earth quivered 
as though it had taken a death wound. Our 
wind shield cracked across under the force of 
the concussion. Gravel and bits of clay de- 
scended about us in a pattering shower. 

Speaking for myself, I may say that one of 
the most noticeable physical effects of having 
a nine shell exploding in one's immediate 
vicinity is a curious sinking sensation at the 
pit of the stomach, complicated with a dryness 
of the mouth and sudden chill in the feet. 

Two more shells dropped within a hundred 
yards of us before we got that tire pumped up 
and departed. Even so, I believe the world's 
[137] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

record for pumping up tires was broken on this 
occasion. I am in position to speak with author- 
ity on this detail, because I was doing the 
pumping. 



[138] 



CHAPTER IX 
ACES UP! 



INSIDE tlie German lines at the start of 
the war I met Ingold, then the first ace 
of the German aerial outfit; only the Ger- 
mans did not call them aces in those days 
of the beginnings of things. The party to 
which I was attached spent the better part 
of a day as guests of Herr Hauptmann Ingold 
and his mates. Later we heard of his death 
in action aloft. 

Coming over for this present excursion I 
crossed on the same steamer with Bishop 
of Canada — a major of His Britannic Maj- 
esty's forces at twenty-two, and at twenty- 
three the bearer of the Victoria Cross and of 
every other honour almost that King George 
bestows for valour and distinguished service, 
which means dangerous service. I have for- 
gotten how many boche machines this young 
man had, to date, accounted for. Whether 
the number was forty-seven or fifty-seven I 
am not sure. I doubt if Bishop himself knew 
the exact figure. 

[139] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

At Paris, after my arrival, and at various 
places along tlie Front I have swapped talk 
and smoking tobacco with sundry more or less 
well-known members of the Lafayette Esca- 
drille and with unattached aviators of repute 
and proved ability. From each of these men 
and from all of them — Belgians, Italians, Amer- 
icans, Britishers and Frenchmen — I brought 
away an impression of the light-hearted gal- 
lantry, the modesty and the exceeding great 
competency which appear to be the outstand- 
ing characteristics of those who do their fight- 
ing — and, in a great many instances, their 
dying — in the air. It was almost as though the 
souls of these men had been made cleaner and 
as though their spirits had been made to burn 
with a whiter flame by reason of the purer 
element in which they carried on the bulk of 
their appointed share in this war business. You 
somehow felt that when they left the earth 
thej^ shook off from their feet a good part of the 
dirt of the earth. I do not mean to imply that 
they had become superhuman, but that they 
had acquired, along with their training for a 
special and particularised calling, some touch 
of the romanticism that attached to the an- 
cient and dutiful profession of knight-errantry. 

Nor is this hard to understand. For a fact 
the flying men are to-day the knights-errant 
of the armies. To them are destined oppor- 
tunities for individual achievement and for 
individual initiative and very often for indi- 

[ 140] 



ACES UP : 

vidual sacrifice such as are denied the masses 
of performers in this war, which in so many 
respects is a clandestine war and which in nearly 
all respects is an anonymous war. I think 
sometimes that, more even than the abject 
stupidity of the enterprise, it is the entire 
taking-away of the drama — the colour of theat- 
ricalism, the pomp and the circumstance, the 
fuss and the feathers — that will make war an 
exceedingly unpopular institution for future 
generations, as it has been an exceedingly un- 
profitable if a highly necessary one for this 
present generation. When the planet has been 
purged of militarism, the parent sin of the 
whole sinful and monstrous thing, I am con- 
vinced that the sordid, physically filthy drab- 
ness that now envelops the machinery of it 
will be as potent an agency as the spreading 
of the doctrine of democracy in curing civilised 
mankind of any desire to make war for war's 
sake rather than for freedom and justice. 

One has only to see it at first hand in this 
fourth year of conflict to realise how com- 
pletely war has been translated out of its former 
elements. It is no longer an exciting outdoor 
sport for fox-chasing gentlemen in bright-red 
coats; no longer a seasonal diversion for cross- 
country riders in buckskin breeches. It is a 
trade for expert accountants, for civil-engi- 
neering sharps, for rule of thumb, for pick and 
shovel and the land surveyor's instruments. 
As the outward romance of it has vanished 
[141] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

away, in the same proportion the amount of 
manual labour necessary to accomplish any de- 
sired object has increased until it is nearly all 
work and mighty little play — a combination 
which makes Jack a dull boy and makes war 
a far duller game than it used to be. Of course 
the chances for heroic achievements, for the 
development and the exercise of the traits of 
courage and steadfastness and disciplined en- 
ergy, are as frequent as ever they were, but 
generally speaking the picturesqueness with 
which mankind always has loved to invest its 
more heroic virtues has been obliterated — flat- 
tened under the steam roller. 

To the average soldier is denied the prospect 
of ever meeting face to face the foe with whom 
he contends. For every man who with set jaw 
climbs the top to sink his teeth, figuratively or 
actually, in the embodied enemy, there are a 
dozen who toil and moil far back behind in 
manual labours of the most exacting and ex- 
hausting forms imaginable. A night raid is a 
variety of sublimated burglary, better adapted 
to the temperament of the prowler and the 
poacher than to the upstanding soldier man's 
instincts. If there be fear of gas he adds to the 
verisimilitude of the imitation by hiding his 
face behind a mask as though he were a foot- 
pad. If a battle be a massacre, which generally 
it is, then intermittent fighting is merely or- 
ganised and systematised assassination. 

By stealth, by trick and device, by artificial 
[ 142 ] 



ACES UP : 

expedients smacking of the allied schools of 
the housebreaker and the highwayman, things 
are accomplished that once upon a bygone 
time eventuated from brawn, plus powder, plus 
chilled steel. Trench work means setting a 
man to dig in the mud a hole that may become 
his grave, and frequently does. He spends his 
days in a shallow crevice in the earth and his 
nights in a somewhat deeper one, called a dug- 
out. He combines in his customary life the 
habits of the boring grub and the habits of the 
blind worm, with a touch of the mine mule 
thrown in. 

Once in a while he stings like a puff-adder, 
but not often. The infantryman plies a spade 
a week for every hour that he pumps a rifle. 
The cavalryman is more apt to be driving a 
truck or tramping long roads than riding a horse. 
The artilleryman sets up his pieces miles be- 
hind the line and fires at the indirect target of 
an invisible foe, without the poor satisfaction 
of being able to tell, with his eyes, whether he 
scored a hit or a miss. A sum in arithmetic is 
his guide and a telephone operator is his men- 
tor. Mayhap some day a hostile shell descends 
out of a clear sky upon his battery; and then 
the men are mess and the guns are scrap and 
that is all there is to that small chapter of the 
great tale of the war. 

The bomber who spends months learning 
how to cast the grenade may never get a 
chance to cast one except in practice. A man 

[143] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

fights for his flag but doesn't see it when the 
action starts, for then it is furled. The regi- 
mental band plays him off to church service 
but not into the battle. When the battle be- 
gins the bandmen have exchanged their horns 
for the handles of a litter, becoming stretcher 
bearers. The general wears no epaulets. He 
wears a worried look brought on by dealing o' 
nights with strategic problems out of a book. 
The modern thin red line is a thing done in 
bookkeeper's ink on a ruled form. So it goes. 
The bubble reputation is won, not at the can- 
non's mouth, but across a desk top in a shell- 
proof fox den far from where the cannon are. 
The gallant six hundred do not ride into the 
jaws of death. Numbering many times six 
hundred, they advance afoot, creeping at a 
pallbearer's pace behind a barrage fire. So it 
keeps on going. 

In only one wing of the service, and that the 
newest of all the wings, is there to be found a 
likeness to the chivalry and the showiness of 
these other times. The aviator is the one ex- 
ception to a common rule. To him falls the 
great adventure. He goes jousting in the blue 
lists of the sky, helmeted and corseleted like a 
crusader of old. His lance is a spitting machine 
gun. His steed is a twentieth-century Pegasus, 
with wings of fine linen and guts of tried steel. 
Thousands of envying eyes follow him as he 
steers his single course to wage his single com- 
bat, and if he takes his death up there it is a 
[144! ] 



ACES UP : 

clean, quick, merciful death high above the 
muck and more and jets of noxious laboratory 
fumes where the rest take theirs. 

Even the surroundings of the birdman's nest 
are physically nore attractive than the habitat 
of his brother at arms who bides below. I can 
think of nothing homelier in outline or colour 
than the shelters — sometimes of planking, some- 
times of corrugated iron, sometimes of earth — 
in which the soldiers hide here in France. Tfie 
field hospital is apt to be a distressingly plain 
structure of unpainted boards with sandbags 
banked against it. 

I have seen a general's headquarters in an 
underground tunnel that was like an over- 
grown badger's nest, with nothing outwardly 
to distinguish it from a similar row of tunnels 
except that it had a lettered sign over its damp 
and dripping mouth. 

Tents, which have a certain picturesque 
quality when grouped, are rarely seen here in 
this closely settled Europe, where nearly al- 
ways there are enough roofed and walled build- 
ings to provide billets for the troops, however 
numerous. Instead of tents there are occa- 
sionally jumbles of makeshift barracks, and 
more often haphazard colonies of sheds serving 
as garages or as supply depots or as offices or 
as what not. War, which in itself is so ugly 
a thing, seems to possess the facility of making 
ugly its accessories before and after the fact. 

But the quarters of the flying machines, 
[ 145 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

through their vastness and isolation, acquire a 
certain quaHty of catching the eye that is en- 
tirely lacking for the rest of the picture — the 
big hangars in the background, suggesting by 
their shape and number the pitched encamp- 
ment of a three-ring circus; the flappy canvas 
shields at the open side of the dromes, which, 
being streaked and daubed with paint camou- 
flage, enhance the carnival suggestion by look- 
ing, at a distance, like side-show banners; the 
caravans of trucks drawn up in lines; and in" 
fine weather the flying craft resting in the land- 
ing field, all slick and groomed and polished, 
like a landed proprietor's blooded stock, giving 
off flashes from aluminum and varnish and 
steel and deft cabinetwork in answer to the 
caresses of the sunshine. 

Right here I am reminded that the tem- 
peramental differences of the Allied nations are 
shown most aptly, I think, in the fashion in 
which the aviators decorate their gorgeous pets. 

Upon its planes, of course, each bears the 
distinguishing mark of the country to which it 
belongs, but the bodies are the property, so to 
speak, of the individual flyers, to be treated 
according to the fancy of the individual. 

Thus it befalls that an Italian machine gen- 
erally carries a picture of a flower upon its sides. 
It is characteristic of the race that a French 
machine usually wears either a valorous, so- 
norous name or the name of a woman — perhaps 
the name of the aviator's sweetheart, or that 
1 146 ] 



ACES UP I 

of his mother or his sister possibly. But your 
average British airman is apt to christen his 
machine Old Bill or Gaby or Our Little Nipper 
or The Walloping Window Blind — I have seen 
all of these cheery titles emblazoned upon 
splendid big aircraft in a British hangar — and 
just let it go at that. 

I reckon the German, taking his morning 
hate along with his morning chicory, never 
will understand how it is the Britisher and 
the Yankee can make war and make jokes 
about it and be good sportsmen all at the 
same time. The German is very sentimental 
— I myself have heard him with tears in his 
voice singing his songs of the home place and 
the Christmas tree and the Rhine maiden as 
he marched past a burning orphan asylum in 
Belgium; but his sense of humour, if ever he 
really owned such a thing, was long ago smoth- 
ered to death by the poisoned chemical processes 
of his own military machine. The man who was 
so bad that he was scared of himself must 
have been the original exemplar of the fright- 
fulness doctrine. Anyhow he was born in 
Prussia — I'm sure of that much anyway. 

But I am getting away from my subject — 
have been getting away from it for quite a 
spell, I fear; because in the first place I started 
out to tell about a meeting and a trip and a 
dinner and a song and divers other things. 
The aflFair dated from a certain spring noon- 
time when two of us, writers by trade, were 
[147] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

temporarily marooned for the day at the press 
headquarters of the American Expeditionary 
Force because we couldn't anywhere get hold 
of an automobile to take us for a scouting 
jaunt along the American sector. All of a 
sudden a big biplane came sailing into sight, 
glittering like a silver flying fish. It landed in 
a meadow behind the town and two persons, 
muffled in greatcoats, decanted themselves out 
of it and tramped across the half -flooded field 
toward us. When they drew near we perceived 
them to be two very young, very ruddy gentle- 
men, and both unmistakably English. My 
companion, it seemed, knew one of them, so 
there were introductions. 

"What brings you over this way.?" inquired 
my friend. 

"Well, you see," said his acquaintance, "we 
were a bit thirsty — Bert and I — and we heard 
you had very good beer at the French oflScers' 
club here. So we just ran over for half an hour 
or so to get a drop of drink anjd then toddle 
along back again. Not a bad idea, eh, what.''" 

The speaker, I noted, wore the twin crowns 
of a captain on the shoulder straps of his over- 
coat. His age I should have put at twenty-one 
or thereabout, and his complexion was the com- 
plexion of a very new, very healthy cherub. 

We showed the way toward beer and lunch, 
the latter being table d'hote but good. En 
route my confrere was moved to ask more ques- 
tions. 

[148] 



ACES UP ! 

"Anything new happening at the squadron 
since I was over that way?" he inquired. 

"Quiet enough to be a bore — weather hasn't 
suited for our sort these last few evenings," 
stated the taller one. "We got fed up on 
doin' nothin' at all, so night before last a 
squad started across the border to give Fritzie 
a taste of life. But just after we started the 
squadron commander decided the weather was 
too thickish and he signed us back — all but the 
Young-un, who claims he didn't see the flare 
and kept on goin' all by his little self." He 
favoured us with a tremendous wink. 

"It seemed a rotten shame, really it did, to 
waste the whole evenin'." This was the 
Young-un, he of the pink cheeks, speaking. 
"So I just jogged across the jolly old Rhine 
until I come to a town, and I dropped my pills 
there and came back. Nice quiet trip it was — 
lonely rather, and not a bit excitin'." 

Upon me a light dawned. I had heard of 
these bombing squadrons of the British outfits 
of young but seasoned flying men, who, now 
that reprisal in kind had been forced upon 
England and France by the continued German 
policy of aerial attacks on unprotected and un- 
armed cities, made journeys from French soil 
by sky line to enemy districts, there to spatter 
down retaliatory bombs upon such towns as 
Mainz, Stuttgart, Coblenz, Mannheim, Treves 
and Metz. 

The which sounded simple enough in the 
[149] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

bald telling, but entailed for each separate pair 
of flyers on each separate excursion enough of 
thrill, suspense and danger to last the average 
man through all his various reincarnations 
upon this earth. It meant a flight by darkness 
at sixty or seventy miles an hour, the pilot at 
the wheel and the observer at the guardian 
machine gun, above the tangled skeins of 
friendly trenches; and a little farther on above 
and past the hostile lines, beset for every rod 
of the way, both going and coming, by peril of 
attack from antiaircraft gun and from speedier, 
more agile German flyers, since the bombing 
airship is heavier and slower than scout planes 
commonly are. It meant finding the objective 
point of attack and loosing the explosive shells 
hanging like ripe plums from lever hooks in 
the frame of the engine body; and this done 
it meant winging back again — provided they 
got back — in time for late dinner at the home 
hangars. 

Personally I craved to see more of men en- 
gaged upon such employment. Through lunch 
I studied the two present specimens of a new 
and special type of human being. Except that 
Bert was big and the Young-un was short, and 
except that the Young-un spoke of dropping 
pills when he meant to tell of spilling potential 
destruction upon the supply depots and railroad 
terminals of Germany, whereas Bert affection- 
ately referred to his machine as The Red Hen 
and called the same process laying an egg or 

[150] 



ACES UP : 

two, there was no great distinction to be drawn 
between them. Both made mention of the 
most incredibly daring things in the most 
commonplace and casual way imaginable; both 
had the inquisitive nose and the incurious eye 
of their breed; both professed a tremendous 
interest in things not one-thousandth part so 
interesting as what they themselves did; and 
both used the word "extraordinary" to express 
their convictions upon subjects not in the least 
extraordinary, but failed to use it when the 
topic dealt with their own duties and deserved 
to excess the adjectival treatment. In short, 
they were just two well-bred English boys. 



[151] 



CHAPTER X 
HAPPY LANDINGS 



OUT of the luncheon sprang an invita- 
tion, and out of the invitation was born 
a trip. On a day when the atmosphere 
was better fitted for automobiling in 
closed cars than for bombings we headed away 
from our billets, travelling in what I shall call 
a general direction, there being four of us be- 
sides the sergeant who drove. Things were 
stirring along the Front. Miles away we could 
hear the battery heavies thundering and drum- 
ming, and once in a lull we detected the ham- 
mering staccato of a machine gun tacking down 
the loose edges of a fight that will never be re- 
corded in history, with the earnestness and 
briskness of a man laying a carpet in a hurry. 
The Romans taught the French how to plan 
highroads, and the French never forgot the 
lesson. The particular road we travelled ran 
kilometre on kilometre straight as a lance up 
the hills and down again across the valleys, and 
only turned out to round the shoulders of a 
little mountain or when it flanked the shore line 

[152] 



HAPPY LANDINGS 



of one of the small brawling French rivers. 
The tall poplars in pairs, always in pairs, which 
edged it were like lean old gossips bending in 
toward the centre the better to exchange whis- 
pered scandal about the neighbours. Mainly 
the road pierced through fields, with infrequent 
villages to be passed and once a canal to be 
skirted; but also there were forests where wild 
boar were reputed to reside and where, as we 
know, the pheasant throve in numbers un- 
dreamed of in the ante-bellum days before all 
the powder in Europe was needed to kill off 
men, and while yet some of it might be spared 
for killing off birds. 

Regarding the mountains a rule was preva- 
lent. If one flank of a mountain was wooded 
we might be reasonably sure that the farther 
side would present a patchwork pattern of tiny 
farms, square sometimes, but more often oblong 
in shape, each plastered against the steep con- 
formation and each so nearly perpendicular 
that we wondered how anybody except a re- 
tired paper hanger ever dared try to cultivate 
it. Let a husbandman's foot slip up there and 
he would be committing trespass in the plot 
of the next man below. 

I shall not tell how far we rode, or whither, 
but dusk found us in a place which, atmospher- 
ically speaking, was very far removed from the 
French foothills, but geographically perhaps 
not so far. So far as its local colour was con- 
cerned the place in point more nearly than any- 

[153] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

thing else I call to mind resembled the interior 
of a Greek-letter society's chapter house set 
amid somewhat primitive surroundings. In 
the centre of the low wide common room, 
mounted on a concrete box, was a big openwork 
basket of wrought iron. In this brazier burned 
fagots of wood, and the smoke went up a metal 
pipe which widened out to funnel shape at the 
bottom, four feet above the floor. 

Such a device has three advantages over the 
ordinary fireplace: Folks may sit upon four 
sides of it, toasting their shins by direct contact 
with the heat, instead of upon only one, as is 
the case when your chimney goes up through 
the wall of your house. There were illustrations 
cut from papers upon the walls; there were 
sporting prints and London dailies on the 
chairs and trestles; there was a phonograph, 
which performed wheezily, as though it had 
asthma, and a piano, which by authority was 
mute until after dinner; there were sundry 
guitars and mandolins disposed in corners ; there 
were sofa pillows upon the settees, plainly the 
handiwork of some fellow's best girl; there were 
clumsy, schoolboy decorative touches all about; 
there were glasses and bottles on tables; there 
were English non-coms, who in their gravity 
and promptness might have been club servants, 
bringing in more bottles and fresh glasses; and 
there were frolicking, boisterous groups and 
knots and clusters of youths who, except that 
they wore the khaki of junior officers of His 
[154] 



HAPPY LANDINGS 



Majesty's service instead of the ramping pat- 
terns affected by your average undergraduates, 
were for all the world just such a collection of 
resident inmates as you would find playing 
the goat and the colt and the skylark in any 
college fraternity hall on any pleasant evening 
anywhere among the English-speaking peoples. 

For guests of honour there were our four, 
and for hosts there were sixty or seventy mem- 
bers of Night Bombing Squadron Number . 

It so happened that this particular group of 
picked and sifted young daredevils represented 
every main division of the empire's domain. As 
we were told, there were present Englishmen, 
Cornishmen, Welshmen, Scots and Irishmen; 
also Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, 
an Afrikander or two, and a dark youngster 
from India; as well as recruits gathered in from 
lesser lands and lesser colonies where the Union 
Jack floats in the seven seas that girdle this 
globe. 

The ranking officer — a major by title, and 
he not yet twenty-four years old — bore the 
name of a Highland clan, the mere mention of 
which set me to thinking of whanging claymores 
and skirling pipes. His next in command was 
the nephew and namesake of a famous Home 
Ruler, and this one spoke with the soft-cultured 
brogue of the Dublin collegian. We were intro- 
duced to a flyer bred and reared in Japan, who 
had hurried to the mother isle as soon as he 
reached the volunteering age — a shy, quiet lad 

[ 1'55 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

with a downy upper lip, wlio promptly effaced 
himself; and to a young Tasmanian of Celtic 
antecedents, who, curiously enough, spoke with 
an English accent richer and more pronounced 
than any native Englishman in the company 
used. 

I took pains to ascertain the average age of 
the personnel of the squadron. I am giving no 
information to the enemy that he already does 
not know — to his cost — when I state it to be 
twenty-two and a half years. With perfect 
gravity veteran airmen of twenty-three or so 
will tell you that when a fellow reaches twenty- 
five he's getting rather a bit too old for the 
game — good enough for instructing green hands 
and all that sort of thing, perhaps, but gener- 
ally past the age when he may be counted upon 
for effective work against the Hun aloft. And 
the wondrous part of it is that it is true as 
Gospel. 'Tis a man's game, if ever there was 
a man's game in this world; and it's boys with 
the peach-down of adolescence on their cheeks 
that play it best. 

Well, we had dinner; and a very good dinner 
it was, served in the mess hall adjoining, with 
fowls and a noble green salad, and good honest- 
to-cow's butter on the table. But before we 
had dinner a thing befell which to me was as 
simply dramatic as anything possibly could be. 
What was more, it came at a moment made 
and fit for dramatics, being as deftly insinuated 
by chance into the proper spot as though a 
[156] 



HAPPY LANDINGS 



skilled playmaster had contrived it for the 
climax of his second act. 

Glasses had been charged all round, and we 
were standing to drink the toast of the British 
aviator when, almost together, two small things 
happened: The electric lights flickered out, 
leaving us in the half glow of the crackling 
flames in the brazier, its tints bringing out 
here a ruddy young face and there a buckle of 
brass or a button of bronze but leaving all the 
rest of the picture in flickering shadows; right 
on top of this a servant entered, saluted and 
handed to the squadron commander a slip of 
paper bearing a bulletin just received by tele- 
phone from the headquarters of a sister squad- 
ron in a near-by sector. The young major first 
read it through silently and then read it aloud: 

"Eight machines of squadron made a 

day-light raid this afternoon. The operation 
was successfully carried out." A little pause. 
"Three of the machines failed to return." 

That was all. Three of the machines failed 
to return — six men, mates to these youngsters 
assembled here and friends to some of them, 
had gone down in the wreckage of their air- 
craft, probably to death or to what was hardly 
less terrible than death — to captivity in a 
German prison camp. 

Well, it was all in the day's work. No one 

spoke, nor in my hearing did any one afterward 

refer to it. But the glasses came up with a 

jerk, and at that, as though on a signal from 

[157] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

a stage manager, the lights flipped on, and 
then together we drank the airman's toast, 
which is : 

"Happy landings!" 

I do not profess to speak for the others, but 
for myself I know I drank to the memory of 
those six blithe boys — riders in the three ma- 
chines that failed to return — and to a happy 
landing for them in the eternity to which they 
had been hurried long before their time. 

The best part of the dinner came after the 
dinner was over, which was as a dinner party 
should be. We flanked ourselves on the four 
sides of the fire, and tobacco smoke rose in 
volume as an incense to good fellowship, and 
there were stories told and limericks offered 
without number. And if a story was new we 
all laughed at it, and if it was old we laughed 
just the same. Presently a protesting lad was 
dragooned for service at the piano. The official 
troubadour, a youth who seemed to be all legs 
and elbows, likewise detached himself from the 
background. Instead of taking station along- 
side the piano he climbed gravely up on top 
of it and perched there above our heads, with 
his legs dangling down below the keys. Touch- 
ing on this, the Young-un, who sat alongside 
of me, made explanation: 

"Old Bob likes to sit on the old jingle box 
when he sings, you know. He says that then 
he can feel the music going up through him 
and it makes him sing. He'll stay up there 

[158] 



HAPPY LANDINGS 



singing like a bloomin' bullfinch till some one 
drags him down. He seems to sort of get drunk 
on singin' — really he does. Extraordinary 
fancy, isn't it.'^" 

I should have been the last to drag Old Bob 
down. For, employing a wonderful East Ender 
whine. Old Bob sang a gorgeous Cockney 
ballad dealing with the woeful case of a simple 
country maiden, and her smyle it was su- 
blyme, but she met among others the village 
squire, and the rest of it may not be printed 
in a volume having a family circulation; but 
anyway it was a theme replete with incident 
and abounding in detail, with a hundred verses 
more or less and a chorus after every verse, 
for which said chorus we all joined in mightily. 

From this beginning Old Bob, beating time 
with both hands, ranged far afield into his 
repertoire. Under cover of his singing I did 
my level best to draw out the Young-un — who 
it seemed was the Young-un more by reason of 
his size and boyish complexion than by reason 
of his age, since he was senior to half his outfit 
— to draw him out with particular reference to 
his experiences since the time, a year before, 
when he quit the line, being then a full cap- 
tain, to take a berth as observer in the service 
of the air. 

It was hard sledding, though. He was just 
as inarticulate and just as diffident as the av- 
erage English gentleman is apt to be when he 
speaks in the hated terms of shop talk of his 
[159] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

own share in any dangerous or unusual enter- 
prise. Besides, our points of view were so 
different. He wanted to hear about the latest 
music-hall shows in London ; he asked about the 
life in London with a touch in his voice of what 
I interpreted as homesickness. Whereas I 
wanted to know the sensations of a youth who 
flirts with death as a part of his daily vocation. 
Finally I got him under way, after this wise: 

"Oh, we just go over the line, you know, and 
drop our pills and come back. Occasionally a 
chap doesn't get back. And that's about all 
there is to tell about it. . . . Rummiest thing 
that has happened since I came into the squad- 
ron happened the other night. The boche came 
over to raid us, and when the alarm was given 
every one popped out of his bed and made for 
the dugout. All but Big Bill over yonder. 
Big Bill tumbled out half dressed and more 
than half asleep. It was a fine moonlight night 
and the boche was sailing about overhead 
bombing us like a good one, and Big Bill, who's 
a size to make a good target, couldn't find the 
entrance to either of the dugouts. So he ran 
for the woods just beyond here at the edge of 
the flying field, and no sooner had he got into 
the woods than a wild boar came charging at 
him and chased him out again into the open 
where the bombs were droppin'. Almost got 
him, too — the wild boar, I mean. The bombs 
didn't fall anywhere near him. Extraordinary, 
wasn't it, havin' a wild boar turn up like 
[ 160 ] 



HAPPY LANDINGS 



that just when he was particularly anxious not 
to meet any wild boar, not being dressed for it, 
as you might say? He was in a towerin' rage 
when the boche went away and we came out 
of the dugouts and only laughed at him instead 
of sympathisin' with him." 

He puffed at his pipe. 

"Fritz gets peevish and comes about to 
throw things at us quite frequently. You see, 
this camp isn't in a very good place. We took 
it over from the French and it stands out in 
the open instead of being in the edge of the 
forest where it should be. Makes it rather 
uncomfy for us sometimes — Fritzie does." 

All of which rather prepared me for what oc- 
curred perhaps five minutes later when for the 
second time that night the electric lights winked 
out. 

Old Bob ceased from his carolling, and the 
mess president, a little sandy Scotchman, spoke 
up: 

"It may be that the boche is coming to call 
on us — the men douse the lights if we get a 
warning; or it may be that the battery has 
failed. At any rate I vote we have in some 
candles and carry on. This is too fine an even- 
ing to be spoiled before it's half over, eh?" 

A failed battery it must have been, for no 
boche bombers came. So upon the candles 
being fetched in. Old Bob resumed at the point 
where he had left off. He sang straight through 
to midnight, nearly, never minding the story 
[161] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

telling and the limerick matching and the 
laughter and the horse play going on below him, 
and rarely repeating a song except by request 
of the audience. If his accompanist at the 
piano knew the air, all very well and good; if 
not. Old Bob sang it without the music. 

They didn't in the least want us to leave 
when the time came for us to leave, vowing 
that the fun was only just starting and that 
it would be getting better toward daylight. 
But ahead of us we had a long ride, without 
lights, over pitchy-dark roads, so we got into 
our car and departed. First, though, we must 
promise to come back again very soon, and 
must join them in a nightcap glass, they toast- 
ing us with their airmen's toast, which seemed 
so well to match in with their buoyant spirits. 

When next I passed by that road the hangars 
were empty of life and the barracks had been 
torn down. The great offensive had started 
the week before, and on the third day of it, 
as we learned from other sources, our friends 

of Night Bombing Squadron Number , 

obeying an order, had climbed by pairs into 
their big planes and had gone winging away to 
do their share in the air fighting where the 
fighting lines were locked fast. 

There was need just then for every available 
British aeroplane — the more need because each 
day showed a steadily mounting list of lost 
machines and lost airmen. I doubt whether 
many of those blithesome lads came out of 
[162] 



HAPPY LANDINGS 



that hell alive, and doubt very much, too, 
whether I shall ever see any of them again. 

So always I shall think of them as I saw 
them last — their number being sixty or so 
and the average age twenty-two and a half — 
grouped at the doorway of their quarters, with 
the candlelight and the firelight shining behind 
them, and their glasses raised, wishing to us 
"Happy landings!" 



[163] 



CHAPTER XI 
TRENCH ESSENCE 



WHEN our soldiers arrive on foreign 
soil, almost invariably, so it has 
seemed to me watching them, they 
come ashore with serious faces and 
for the most part in silence. Their eyes are 
busy, but their tongues are taking vacation. 
For the time being they have lost that tre- 
mendous high-powered exuberance which marks 
them at home, in the camps and the canton- 
ments, and which we think is as much a part 
of the organism of the optimistic American 
youth as his hands and his legs are. 

I noticed this thing on the day our ship 
landed at an English port. We came under 
convoy in a fleet made up almost entirely of 
transports bearing troops — American volun- 
teers, Canadian volunteers, and aliens recruited 
on American soil for service with the Allies. 
A Canadian battalion, newly organised, marched 
ojff its ship and out upon the same pier on 
which the soldiers who had crossed on the 
vessel upon which I was a passenger were dis- 
[ 164] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



embarking. The Canadians behaved Hke school- 
boys on a hoKday. 

It was not what the most consistent de- 
fender of the chmate of Great Britain would 
call good holidaying weather either. A while 
that day it snowed, and a while it rained, and 
all the while a shrewish wind scolded shrilly 
in the wireless rig and rampaged along the 
damp and drafty decks. Nevertheless, the Ca- 
nadians were not to be daunted by the inhos- 
pitable attitude of the elements. 

One in three of them, about, carried a pen- 
nant bearing the name of his home town or his 
home province, or else he carried a little flag 
mounted on a walking stick. Nine out of ten, 
about, were whooping. They cheered for the 
ship they were leaving; they cheered for the 
sister ship that had borne us overseas along 
with them; they cheered to feel once more the 
solid earth beneath their feet; they cheered 
just to be cheerful, and, cheering so, they trav- 
ersed the dock and took possession of the train 
that stood on a waterside track waiting to bear 
them to a rest camp. I imagine they were still 
cheering when they got there. 

Now if you knew the types we had aboard 
our packet you might have been justified in 
advance for figuring that our outfit would be 
giving those joyous Canadian youngsters some 
spirited competition in the matter of making 
noises. We carried a full regiment of a West- 
ern division, largely made up, as to officers and 
[165] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

as to men, of national guardsmen from the 
states of Colorado, Wyoming and Washington. 
They were cow-punchers, ranch hands, lumber- 
men, fruit growers, miners — outdoor men gen- 
erally. Eighty men in the ranks, so I had 
learned during the voyage, were full-blooded 
Indians off of Northwestern reservations. We 
had men along who had won prizes for bronco- 
busting and bull-dogging at Frontier Day cele- 
brations in Cheyenne and in California; also 
men who had travelled with the Wild West 
shows as champion ropers and experts at rough- 
riding. Never before, I am sure, had one vessel 
at one time borne in her decks so many wind- 
tanned, bow-legged, hawk-faced, wiry Western 
Americans as this vessel had borne. 

But did one hear the lone-wolf howl as our 
fellows went filing down the gang-planks .f* Did 
one catch the exultant, shrill yip-yip-yip of .the 
round-up or the far-carrying war yell of the 
Cheyenne buck? One most emphatically did 
not. If those three thousand and odd fellows 
had all been pallbearers officiating at the put- 
ting away of a dear departed friend they could 
not have deported themselves more soberly. 
Nobody carried a flag, unless you would except 
the colour bearers, who bore their colours 
furled about the staffs and protected inside of 
tarpaulin holsterings. Nobody waved a broad- 
brimmed hat either in salute to the Old World 
or in farewell to the ocean. Barring the 
snapped commands of the officers, the clinking 
[166] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



in unison of hobbed and heavy boot soles, the 
shuffle of moving bodies, the creak of leather 
girthings put under strain, and occasionally the 
sharp clink and clatter of metal as some dan- 
gling side arm struck against a guard rail or 
some man shifted his piece, the march-off was 
accomplished without any noise whatsoever. 
It was interesting — and significant, too, I 
think — to spy upon those intent, set faces and 
those eager, steady eyes as the files went by 
and so away, bound, by successive stages of 
progress, with halts between at sessioning bil- 
lets and at training barracks, for the battle 
fronts beyond the channel. 

As between the Canadian and the United 
States soldiers I interpreted this striking dif- 
ference in demeanour at the disembarking hour 
somewhat after this fashion : To a good many of 
the Dominion lads, no doubt, the thing was in 
the nature of a home-coming, for they had 
been born in England. A great many more of 
them could not be more than one generation 
removed from English birth. Anyhow and in 
either event, they as thoroughly belonged to 
and were as entirely part and parcel of the 
Empire as the islanders who greeted them 
upon the piers. One way or another they had 
always lived on British soil and under the 
shadow of the Union Jack. They were not 
strangers; neither were they aliens, even though 
they had come a far way; they were joint in- 
heritors with native Englishmen of the glory 
[167] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

that is England's. The men they would pres- 
ently fight beside were their own blood kin. 
Quite naturally therefore and quite properly 
they commemorated the advent into the parent 
land according to the manner of the Anglo- 
Saxon when he strives to cover up, under a 
mien of boisterous enthusiasm, emotions of a 
purer sentiment. I could conceive some of 
them as laughing very loudly because inside of 
themselves they wanted to cry; as straining 
their vocal cords the better to ease the twitch- 
ings at their heart cockles. 

But the Americans, even if they wore names 
bespeaking British ancestry — which I should 
say at an offhand guess at least seventy-five 
per cent of them did — were not moved by any 
such feelings. Such ties as might link their 
natures to the breed from which they remotely 
sprang were the thinnest of ties, only to be 
revealed in times of stress through the exhibi- 
tion of certain characteristics shared by them 
in common with their very distant English and 
Scotch and Irish and Welsh kinsmen. For 
England as England they had no affectionate 
yearnings. England wasn't their mother; she 
was merely their great-great-grandmother, with 
whom their beloved Uncle Sam had had at 
least two serious misunderstandings. To all 
intents and purposes this was a strange land — 
certainly its physical characteristics had an 
alien look to them — ^and to it they had come 
as strangers. 

[ 168 ] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



I fancy, though, the chief reasons for their 
quiet seriousness went down to causes even 
deeper than this one. I believe that somehow 
the importance of the task to which they had 
dedicated themselves and the sense of the re- 
sponsibility intrusted to them as armed repre- 
sentatives of their own country's honour were 
brought to a focal point of realisation in the 
minds of these American lads by the putting 
of foot on European soil. The training they 
had undergone, the distances they had trav- 
elled, the sea thfey had crossed — ^most of them, 
I gathered, had never smelt salt water before 
in their lives — the sight of this foreign city 
with its foreign aspect — all these things had 
chemically combined to produce among them 
a complete appreciation of the size of the job 
ahead of them; and the result made them 
dumb and sedate, and likewise it rendered 
them aloof to surface sensations, leaving them 
insulated by a sort of noncommittal pose not 
commonly found among young Americans in 
the mass — or among older Americans in the 
mass for that matter. 

Perhaps a psychologist might prove me 
wrong in these amateur deductions of mine. 
For proof to bolster up my diagnosis I can only 
add that on three subsequent occasions, when 
I saw American troops ferrying ashore at 
French ports, they behaved in identically this 
same fashion, becoming for a period to be 
measured by hours practically inarticulate and 
[169] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

incredibly earnest. Correspondents who chanced 
to be with me these three several times were 
impressed as I had been by the phenomenon. 

But the condition does not last; you may be 
very sure of that. If there exists a more 
adaptable creature than the American soldier 
he has not yet been tagged, classified and 
marked Exhibit A for identification. Once the 
newly arrived Yank has lost his sea legs and 
regained his shore ones; once the solemnity 
and incidentally the novelty of the ceremony 
of his entrance into Europe has worn away; 
once he has learned how to think of dollars 
and cents in terms of francs and centimes and 
how to speak a few words in barbarous French 
— ^he reverts to type. His native irreverence for 
things that are stately and traditional rises up 
within him, renewed and sharpened; and from 
that moment forward he goes into this business 
of making war against the Hun with an im- 
pudent grin upon his face, and in his soul an 
incurable cheerfulness that neither discomfort 
nor danger can alloy, and a joke forever on 
his lips. That is the real essence of the trenches 
— the humour that is being secreted there with 
the grimmest and ghastliest of all possible trag- 
edies for a background. 

I wouldn't call it exactly a new type of hu- 
mour, because always humour has needed the 
contrast of dismalness and sufiFering to set it 
off effectively, but personally I am of the 
opinion that it is a kind of humour that is 
[170] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



going to affect our literature and our mode of 
living generally after the war is ended. 

Bairnsfather, the English sketch artist, did 
not invent the particular phase of whimsicality 
— ^the essentially distinctive variety of serio- 
comic absurdity — which has made the world 
laugh at his pictures of Old Bill and Bert and 
Alf. He did a more wonderful thing: he had 
the wit and the genius to catch an illusive at- 
mosphere which existed in the trenches before 
he got there and to put it down in black on 
white without losing any part of its savoury 
qualities. In slightly different words he prac- 
tically told me this when I ran across him 
up near the Front the other day while he was 
setting about his new assignment of depicting 
the humour of the American soldier as already 
he had depicted that of the British Tommy. 
He had, he said, made one discovery already — 
that there was a tremendous difference between 
the two schools. 

This is quite true, and if some talented 
Frenchman — it will take a Frenchman, of 
course — succeeds in making sketches that will 
reflect the wartime humour of the French sol- 
dier as cleverly as Bairnsfather has succeeded 
at the same job with the British high private 
for his model it will no doubt be found that 
the poilu's brand of humour is as distinctively 
his own as the American soldier's is or the 
English soldier's is. 

There is an indefinable something, yet some- 
[ 171 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

thing structurally French, I think, in the fact 
that when Captain Hamilton Fish — called Ham 
Fish for short — arrived in France a few weeks 
before this was written the French soldiers with 
whom his command was brigaded immediately 
rechristened him Le Capitaine Jambon Poisson, 
and under this new Gallicised name he is to-day 
one of the best-known personages among the 
French in the country. 

Likewise there is a certain African individual- 
ity, or rather an Afro-American individuality, 
in the story now being circulated through the 
expeditionary forces, of the private in one of 
our negro regiments who bragged at his com- 
pany mess of having taken out a life-insurance 
policy for the full amount allowed a member of 
the Army under the present governmental plan. 

"Whut you wan' do dat fur?" demanded a 
comrade. "You ain't married an' you ain't 
got no fambly. Who you goin' leave all dat 
money to ef you gits killed?" 

"I ain't aimin' to git killed," stated the first 
darky. "Dat's de very reason I taken out all 
dat insho'ence." 

"How come you ain't liable to git killed jes* 
de same ez ary one of de rest of us is?" 

"W'y, you pore ign'ant fool, does you s'pose 
w'en Gin'el Pershing finds out he's got a ten- 
thousand-dollar nigger in dis man's Army dat 
he's gwine take any chances on losin' all dat 
money by sendin' me up to de Front whar de 
trouble is? Naw suh-ree, he ain't!" 
[ 172 ] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



From a commingling of memories of recent 
events there stands out a thing of which I was 
an eye-and-ear-witness back in April, when the 
first of our divisions to go into the line of the 
great battle moved up and across France from 
a quieter area over in Lorraine, where it had 
been holding a sector during the early part of 
the spring. Each correspondent was assigned 
to a separate regiment for the period of the ad- 
vance, being quartered in the headquarters mess 
of his particular regiment and permitted to ac- 
company its columns as it moved forward to- 
ward the Picardy Front. That is to say, he 
was permitted to accompany its columns, but 
it devolved upon him to furnish his own mo- 
tive power. Baggage trains and supply trains 
had been pared to the quick in order to expedite 
fast marching; no provision for transporting 
outsiders had been made, nor would any such 
provision have been permitted. A colonel was 
lucky if he had an automobile to himself and 
his adjutant; generally he had to carry a French 
liaison officer or two along with him in addition 
to his personal equipment. 

I had been added to the personnel of an in- 
fantry regiment, which meant I could not steal 
an occasional ride while moving from one billet 
to another on the jolting limber of a field gun. 
Such boons were vouchsafed only to those more 
fortunate writers who belonged for the time 
being to the artillery wing. One day I walked. 
I was lucky in that I did not have to carry my 
[173] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

bedding roll and my haversack; these a kindly 
disposed ambulance driver smuggled into his 
wagon, rules and regulations to the contrary 
notwithstanding. 

Another day the philanthropic lieutenant 
colonel rode his saddle horse and turned over 
to me his side car, the same being a sort of 
combination of tin bathtub and individual 
bootblack stand, hitched onto a three-wheeled 
motor cycle. What with impedimenta and all, 
I rather overflowed its accommodations, but 
from the bottoms of my blistered feet to the 
topmost lock of my wind-tossed hair I was 
grateful to the donor as we went scudding 
along, the steersman and I, at twenty-five miles 
an hour. 

On a third day I hired a venerable mare and 
an ancient two-wheeled covered cart, with a 
yet more ancient Norman farmer to drive the 
outfit, and under the vast poke-bonnet hood 
of the creaking vehicle the twain of us journeyed 
without stopping, from early breakfast time 
until nearly sunset time. The old man did not 
know a word of English, but mile after mile 
as we plodded along, now overtaking the troops 
who had started their hike at dawn, and now 
being overtaken by them as the antique mare 
lost power in her ponderous but rheumatic legs, 
he conversed at me — not with me, but steadily 
at me — in his provincial patois, which was the 
same as Attic Greek to me, or even more so, 
inasmuch as the only French I have is res- 
[174] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



taurant French, which begins with the hors 
d'oeuvres and ends just south of the fromages 
among the standard desserts. 

Nevertheless, I deemed it the part of pohte- 
ness to show interest by making a response 
from time to time when he was pausing to take 
a fresh breath. So about once in so often I 
would murmur "Yes," with the rising inflec- 
tion, or "No," or "Is that so.?" or "Can such 
things really be.? " as the spirit moved me. And 
always he seemed perfectly satisfied with my 
observations, which he could not hear — I should 
have stated before now that among other 
things he was stone-deaf — -and wouldn't have 
been able to understand even if he had heard 
them. And then he would go right on talking 
some more. From his standpoint, I am con- 
vinced, it was a most enjoyable journey and a 
highly instructive one besides. 

Along toward sunset we ambled with the 
utmost possible deliberation into our destina- 
tion. It was like the average small town of 
Northwestern France in certain regards. At a 
little distance it seemed to be all gable ends 
jumbled together haphazard and anyhow, as is 
the way of village architecture in this corner of 
the world; and following an almost universal 
pattern the houses scraped sides with one an- 
other in a double file along the twisting main 
street, only swinging back to form a sort of 
irregular square in the centre. 

Here, in the heart of things communal, the 
[175] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

grey church reared its bulk above all lesser 
structures, with the school and the town hall 
facing it, flanked one side by the town pump 
and the town shrine and the other side by a 
public pond, where the horses and the cows 
watered, and grave, plump little French chil- 
dren played along the muddy brink. But this 
place had an air of antiquity which showed it 
antedated most of its fellows even in a land 
where everything goes back into bygone cen- 
turies. 

Indeed, the guidebook in peace days, when 
people used guidebooks, gave it upward of a 
page of fine print — not so much for what it 
now was, but for what once upon a time it had 
been. Julius Caesar had founded it and named 
it — and certain of the ruins of the original bat- 
tlement still stood in massy but shapeless 
clumps, while other parts had been utilised to 
form the back ends of houses and barns and 
cowsheds. One of the first of those pitiable 
caravans of innocents that swelled the ranks 
of the Children's Crusade had been recruited 
here; and through the ages this town, inconse- 
quential as it had become in these latter times, 
gave to France and to the world a great chron- 
icler, a great churchman and at least one great 
warrior. 

What a transformation the mere coming of 

our troops had made! In the public pond a 

squad of supply-trainsmen were sluicing down 

four huge motor trucks that stood hub deep 

[176] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



in the yellow water — "bathing the elephants" 
our fellows called this job. Over rutted paving 
stones that once upon a time had bruised the 
bare feet of captured Frankish warriors Missouri 
mules were yanking along the baggage wagons, 
and their dangling trace chains clinked against 
the cobbles just as the fetters on the ankles of 
the prisoners must have clinked away back 
yonder. 

In a courtyard where Roman soldiers may 
have played at knucklebones a portable army 
range sent up a cloud of pungent wood smoke 
from its abbreviated stack, and with the smell 
of the fire was mingled a satisfying odour of 
soldier-grub stewing. Plainly there would be 
something with onions in it — ^probably "Mulli- 
gan" — for supper this night. 

Under a moss-hung wall against which, ac- 
cording to tradition, Peter the Hermit stood 
with the cross in his hand calling the crusaders 
to march with him to deliver the sepulchre of 
the Saviour out of the impious hands of the 
heathen, a line of tired Yankee lads were 
sprawled upon the scanty grass doing nothing 
at all except resting. There were wooden signs 
lettered in English — "Regimental Headquar- 
ters," and "Hospital," and "Intelligence Of- 
fices" — ^fastened to stone door lintels which 
time had seamed and scored with deep lines 
like the wrinkles in an old dame's face. Khaki- 
clad figures were to be seen wherever you 
looked. 

[177] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Up the twisting and hilly street toiled a 
company belonging to my particular regiment, 
and as they came into the billeting place and 
knew the march was over, the wearied and bur- 
dened boys started singing the Doughboys' 
Song, which with divers variations is always 
sung in any infantry outfit that has a skeleton 
formation of old Regular Army men for its 
core, as this outfit had, and which to the ex- 
tent of the first verse runs like this: 

Here come the doughboys 

With dirt behind their ears! 
Here come the doughboys — 
Their pay is in arrears. 
The cavalree, artilleree, and the lousy engineers — 
They couldn't lick the doughboys 
In a hundred thousand years. 

To the swinging lilt of the air the column 
angled past where my cart was halted; and as 
it passed, the official minstrel of the company 
was moved to deliver himself of another verse, 
evidently of his own composition and dealing 
in a commemorative fashion with recent sen- 
timental experiences. As I caught the lines and 
set them down in my notebook they were: 

Here go the doughboys — 

Good-bye, you little dears! 
Here go the doughboys — 

The girls is all in tears! 
The June fems and the gossongs 

And the jolly old mong peres — 
Well, they wont furgit the doughboys 

For at least a hundred years! 
[ 178 ] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



The troubadour with his mates rounded the 
outjutting corner of the church beyond the 
shrine, and I became aware of a highly muddied 
youngster who sat in a cottage doorway with 
his legs extending out across the curbing, en- 
gaged in literary labours. From the facts that 
he balanced a leather-backed book upon one 
knee and held a stub of a pencil poised above a 
fair clean page I deduced that he was posting 
his diary to date. Lots of the American pri- 
vates keep war diaries — except when they for- 
get to, which is oftener than not. 

Three months before, or possibly six, the 
boy in the doorway would have been a strange 
figure in a strange setting. About him was 
scarce an object, save for the shifting figures 
of his own kind, to suggest the place whence 
he hailed. The broom that leaned against the 
wall alongside him was the only new thing in 
view. It was made of a sheaf of willow twigs 
bound about a staff. The stone well curb ten 
feet away was covered with the slow lichen 
growth of centuries. The house behind him, 
to judge by the thickness of its thatched and 
wattled roof and by the erosions in its three- 
foot walls of stone, had been standing for hun- 
dreds of years before the great-granddaddies 
of his generation fought the Indians for a right 
to a home site in the wilderness beyond the 
Alleghanies. 

But now he was most thoroughly at home — 
and looked it. He spoke, addressing a com- 
[179] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

panion stretched out upon the earth across the 
narrow way, and his voice carried the flat, 
shghtly nasal accent of the midwestern corn- 
lands: 

"Say, Murf, what's the name of this blamed 
town, anyhow?" 

"Search me. Maybe they ain't never named 
it. I know you can't buy a decent cigarette 
in it, 'cause I've tried. The *Y' ain't opened 
up yet and the local shops've got nothin' that 
a white man'd smoke, not if he never smoked 
again. What difference does the name make, any- 
way? All these towns are just alike, ain't they ? '* 

With the sophisticated eyes of a potential 
citizen of, say. Weeping Willow, Nebraska, the 
first speaker considered the wonderfully quaint 
and picturesque vista of weathered, slant-ended 
cottages stretching away down the hill, and 
then, as he moistened the tip of his pencil with 
the tip of his tongue: 

"You shore said a mouthful — they're all 
just alike, only some's funnier-lookin' than oth- 
ers. I wonder why they don't paint up and 
use a little whitewash once in a while. Take 
that little house yonder now!" He pointed his 
pencil toward a thatched cottage over whose 
crooked lines and mottled colours a painter 
would rave. " If you was to put a decent shingle 
roof on her and paint her white, with green 
trimmin's round the doors and winders, she 
wouldn't be half bad to look at. Now, would 
she? No cigarettes, huh? Nor nothin'!" In- 
[180] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



spiration came to him as out of the skies and 
he grinned at his own conceit. "Tell you what 
— I'll jest put it down as 'A^owhere in France' 
and let it go at that." 

On the following day my friend, the lieuten- 
ant colonel, brought to the noonday mess a 
tale which I thought carried a distinct flavour 
of the Yankee trench essence. There was a 
captain in the regiment, a last year's graduate 
of the Academy, who wore the shiniest boots 
in all the land round about and the smartest 
Sam Browne belt, and who owned the most 
ornate pair of riding trousers, and by other 
signs and portents showed he had done his 
best to make the world safe for some sporting- 
goods emporium back in the States. This 
captain, it seemed, had approached a sergeant 
who was in charge of a squad engaged in po- 
licing the village street, which is army talk for 
tidying up with shovel and wheelbarrow. 

"See here, sergeant," demanded the young 
captain, "why don't you keep your men moving 
properly .f*" 

"I'm tryin' to, sir," answered the sergeant. 

"Well, look at that man yonder," said the 
captain, pointing toward a languid buck private 
who was leaning on his shovel. "I've been 
watching him and he hasn't moved an inch, 
except to scratch himself, for the last five 
minutes. Now go over there and stir him up! 
Shoot it into him good and proper! I want to 
hear what you say to him." 

[181] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

"Yes, sir," said the sergeant, saluting. 

With no suspicion of a grin upon his face he 
charged down upon the delinquent. 

"Here, you!" he shouted. "What do you 
mean, loafin' round here doin' nothin'.^^ What 
do you think you are, anyhow — one of them 
dam' West Pointers .5^" 

Floyd Gibbons, who was subsequently so 
badly wounded, rode one day into a battery 
of heavy artillery on the Montdidier Front. 
A begrimed battery man hailed him from a 
covert of green sods and camouflage where a 
six-inch gun squatted: "You're with the Chi- 
cago Tribune, ain't you.'*" 

"Yes," answered Gibbons. "Why.?" 

"Well, I just thought I'd tell you that the 
fellows in this battery have got a favourite line 
of daily readin' matter of their own, these 
days." 

"What do you call it?" inquired Gibbons. 

"We call it the Old Flannel Shirt," answered 
the gunner. "Almost any time you can see a 
fellow round here goin' through his copy of it 
for hours on a stretch. He's always sure to 
find something interestin' too. We may not 
be what you'd call bookworms in this bunch, 
but we certainly are the champion little cootie- 
chasers of the United States Army." 

Body vermin or wet clothes or bad billets or 

the chance of a sudden and a violent taking-off 

— no matter what it is — the American soldier 

may be counted upon to make a joke of it. 

[ 182 ] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



This ability to distil a laugh out of what would 
cause many a civilian to swear or weep or quit 
in despair serves more objects than one in our 
expeditionary forces. For one thing it keeps 
the rank and file of the Army in cheerful mood 
to have the mass leavened by so many youths 
of an unquenchable spirit. For another, it 
provides a common ground for fraternising 
when Americans and Britishers are brigaded 
together or when they hold adjoining sectors; 
for the Britisher in this regard is constituted 
very much as the American is, except that his 
humour is apt to assume the form of under- 
estimation of a thing, whereas the American's 
fancy customarily runs to gorgeous hyperbole 
and arrant exaggeration. 

In a certain Canadian battalion that has 
made a splendid record for itself — though for 
that matter you could say the same of every 
Canadian battalion that has crossed the sea 
since the war began — there is a young chap 
whom we will call Sergeant Fulton, because that 
is not his real name. This Sergeant Fulton 
comes fi*'om one of the states west of the Great 
Divide, and he elected on his own account and 
of his own accord to get into the fighting nearly 
two years before his country went to war. In 
addition to being a remarkably handsome and 
personable youth. Sergeant Fulton is probably 
the best rifle shot of his age in the Dominion 
forces. This gift of his, which is so valuable 
a gift in trench fighting, was made apparent to 
[183] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

his superior ofl&cers immediately after he crossed 
the Canadian Hne in 1915 to enlist, whereupon 
he very promptly was promoted from the 
ranks to be a non-com, and when his command 
got into action in France he was detailed for 
sniper duty. 

At that congenial employment the youngster 
has been distinguishing himself ever since. 
Into the rifle pits young Fulton took something 
besides his ability to hit whatever he shot at, 
and his marvellous eyesight — he took a most 
enormous distaste for the institution of roy- 
alty; and this, too, in spite of the fact that 
when he joined up he swore allegiance to His 
Gracious Majesty George the Fifth. His ideas 
of royalty seemingly were based upon things 
he read in school histories. His conception of 
the present occupant of the English throne was 
a person mentally gaited very much like Henry 
the Eighth or Richard the Third, except with 
a worse disposition than either of those historic 
characters had. Apparently he conceived of 
the incumbent as rising in the morning and 
putting on a gold crown and sending a batch 
of nobles to the Tower, after which he enacted 
a number of unjust laws and, unless he felt 
better toward evening, possibly had a few heads 
off. 

Acquaintance with his comrades at arms 
served to rid Sergeant Fulton of some of these 
beliefs, but despite broadening influences he 
has never ceased to wonder — generally doing 

[ 184] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



his wondering in a loud clear voice — ^how any 
man who loved the breath of freedom in his 
nostrils found it endurable to live under a king 
when he might if he chose live under a Presi- 
dent named Woodrow Wilson. 

One morning just at daybreak a Canadian 
captain — who, by the way, told me this tale — 
crawled into a shell hole near the German lines 
where Sergeant Fulton and two other expert 
riflemen had been lying all night, like big-game 
hunters at a water hole, waiting for dawn to 
bring them their chance. One of Fulton's 
mates was a Vancouver lad, the other a London 
Tommy — a typical East-ender, but a very 
smart sniper. 

"Cap," whispered Fulton, from where he 
lay stretched on his belly in the herbage at the 
edge of the crater, "you've got here just in 
time. Ever since it began to get light a Fritzie 
has been digging over there in their front trench. 
I've had him spotted for half an hour. He 
has to squat down to dig; and that's telling 
on his back. Before long I figure he's going 
to straighten up to get the crick out of himself. 
When he does he'll show his head above the 
parapet, and that's when I'm going to part 
his hair in the middle with a bullet. Take a 
squint, Cap, through the periscope and you'll 
be able to locate him, dead easy. Then stay 
right there and you'll see the surprise party 
come off." 

So the captain took a squint as informally 

[185] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

requested. Sure enough, a hundred yards 
away, across the debatable territory, pocked 
with ragged shell pits and traversed by its two 
festering brown tangles of rusty barbed wire, 
he could see the flash of an uplifted shovel 
blade and see the brown clods flying over the 
lip of the enemy's parapet. He kept watching. 
Presently for just a tiny fraction of time the 
round cap of a German infantryman appeared 
above the earthen protection. The sergeant 
had guessed right, and the sergeant's gun 
spoke once. Once was enough — a greenhorn 
at this game would have known that much. 

For there was a shriek over there, and a pair 
of empty outstretched hands were to be seen 
for one instant, with the fingers clutching at 
nothing; and then they disappeared, as their 
owner collapsed into the hole he had been 
digging. 

Then, according to the captain, as the ser- 
geant opened his rifle breach he turned toward 
the Cockney who crowded alongside him, and 
with a gratified grin on his face and a weight 
of sarcasm in his voice he said: "There goes 
another one, eh, bo, for King and Country .f^" 

The Londoner answered on the instant, taking 
the same tone in the reply that the Americaji 
had taken in the taunt. "My word," he said, 
"but Gawge will be pleased w'en 'e 'ears wot 
you done fur 'im!" 

Three of us made a long trip by automobile 
to pay a visit to a coloured regiment, both trip 
[186] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



and visit being described elsewhere in these 
writings. The results more than repaid us for 
the time and trouble. One of the main com- 
pensations was First Class Private Cooksey, 
who, because he used to be an elevator at- 
tendant in a Harlem apartment house, gave his 
occupation in his enlistment blank as "indoor 
chauffeur." It was to First Class Private 
Cooksey that the colonel of the regiment, seeing 
the expression on the other's face when a 
Minenwerfer from a German mortar fell near 
by on the day the command moved up to the 
Front, and made a hole in the earth deep 
enough and wide enough and long enough to 
hide the average smokehouse in — it was, I 
repeat, to First Class Private Cooksey that 
the colonel put this question: 

"Cooksey, if one of those things drops right 
here alongside of us and goes off, are you going 
to stay by me.^^" 

"Kurnal," stated Private Cooksey with sin- 
cerity, "I ain't goin' tell you no lie. Ef one 
of them things busts clost to me I'll jest natch- 
elly be obliged to go away frum here. But 
please, suh, don't you set me down as no de- 
serter. Jest put it in de books as 'absent with- 
out leave,' 'cause I'll be due back jest ez soon 
ez I kin git my brakes to work." 

"But what if the enemy suddenly appears 
in force without any preliminary bombard- 
ment?" pressed the colonel. "What do you 
think you and the rest of the boys will do then.'* " 
[187] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

"Kurnal," said Cooksey earnestly, "we may 
not stick by you but we'll shore render one 
service anyway: We'll spread de word all over 
France 'at de Germans is comin'!" 

Nevertheless, when the Germans did ad- 
vance it is of record that neither First Class 
Private Cooksey nor any of his black and 
brown mates showed the white feather or the 
yellow streak or the turned back. Those to 
whom the test came stayed and fought, and it 
was the Germans who went away. 

It was a member of the Fifteenth who in 
all apparent seriousness suggested to his cap- 
tain that it might be a good idea to cross the 
carrier pigeon with the poll parrot so that when 
a bird came back from the Front it would be 
able to talk its own message instead of bringing 
it along hitched to its shank. 

Speaking of carrier pigeons reminds me of a 
yarn that may or may not be true — it sounds 
almost too good to be true — that is being re- 
lated at the Front. The version most fre- 
quently told has it that a half company of a 
regiment in the Rainbow Division going for- 
ward early one morning in a heavy fog for a 
raid across No Man's Land carried along with 
the rest of the customary equipment a homing 
pigeon. The pigeon in its wicker cage swung 
on the arm of a private, who likewise was bur- 
dened with his rifle, his extra rounds of ammu- 
nition, his trenching tool, his pair of wire cut- 
ters, his steel helmet, his gas mask, his emer- 

[188] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



gency ration and quite a number of other more 
or less cumbersome items. 

It was to be a surprise attack behind the 
cloak of the fog, so there was no artillery 
preparation beforehand nor barrage fire as the 
squads climbed over the top and advanced into 
the mist-hidden beyond. Behind, in the posts 
of observation and in the post of command — 
"P.O." and "P.C." these are called in the 
algebraic terminology of modern war — the 
colonel and his aids and his intelligence officers 
waited for the sound of firing, and when after 
some minutes the distant rattle of rifle fire 
came to their ears they began calculating how 
long reasonably it might be before word reached 
them by one or another medium of communi- 
cation touching on the results of the foray. 
But the ground telephone remained mute, and 
no runner returned through the fog with tidings. 
The suspense tautened as time passed. 

Suddenly a pigeon sped into view flying 
close to the earth. With scores of pairs of 
eager eyes following it in its course the winged 
messenger circled until it located its porta- 
ble cote just behind the colonel's position, 
and fluttering down it entered its| familiar 
shelter. 

An athletic member of the staff hustled up 
the ladder. In half a minute he was tumbling 
down again, clutching in one hand the little 
scroll of paper that he had found fastened about 
the pigeon's leg. With fingers that trembled 
[189] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

in anxiety the colonel unrolled the paper and 
read aloud what was written upon it. 

What he read, in the hurried chirography of 
a kid private, was the following succinct state- 
ment: "I'm tired of carrying this derned bird." 

In London one night Don Martin, of the 
New York Herald, and I were crossing the 
Strand just above Trafalgar Square. In the 
murk of the unlighted street we bumped into a 
group of four uniformed figures. Looking close 
we made out that one was an American soldier, 
that one was a lanky Scot in kilts, slightly 
under the influence of something even more 
exhilarating than the music of the pipes, and 
that the remaining two were English privates. 
We gathered right away that an international 
discussion of some sort was under way. At 
the moment of our approach the American, a 
little dark fellow who spoke with an accent 
that betrayed his Italian nativity, had the 
floor, or rather he had the sidewalk. We halted 
in the half -darkness to listen. 

"It's lika thees," expounded the Yanko- 
Italian, "w'en I say 'I should worry' it mean — 
it mean — why, it mean I shoulda not worry. 
You getta me, huh.?" 

He glanced about him, plainly pleased with 
the very clear and comprehensive explanation 
of this expressive bit of Americanism, which 
had come to him in a sudden burst of inspira- 
tion. 

The others stared at him blankly. It was 
[190] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



one of the Englishmen who broke the silence. 

"You 'ave nothin' to worry habout hat all, 
and so you say that you hare worryin' — his 
that hit?" he inquired. The American nodded. 
"Well, then, hall Hi can say his hit sounds like 
barmy Yankee nonsense to me." 

"Lusten here, laddie, to me," put in the 
Scotchman. "If you've naught to worry 
about, why speak of it at all.? That's whut I 
would be pleased to know." 

"Hoh, never mind," spoke up the second 
Englishman; "let's go get hanother drink at 
the pub." 

"You're too late," stated his countryman in 
lachrymose tones. "While we've been chin- 
chinnin' 'ere the bloomin' pub 'as closed — it's 
arfter hours for a drink." 

But the canny Scot already was feeling about 
with a huge paw in the back folds of his kilt. 
From some mysterious recess he slowly drew 
forth a flat flask. 

"Lads," he stated happily, "in the language 
of our American friend here, we should worry, 
because as it happens, thanks to me own fore- 
thought, we ha' na need to concern ourselves 
wi' worryin' at all, d'ye ken.? Ha' the furst 
nip, Yank!" 

This recital would not be complete did I 
fail to include in it a paragraph or so touch- 
ing on the humorous proclivities of — ^guess 
who! — the commander of a German sub- 
marine, no less; a person who operated last 
[ 191 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

winter mainly off the southernmost tip of 
Ireland with occasional incursions into the 
British Channel. This facetious Teuton was 
known to the crews of the British and American 
destroyers that did their best to sink him — and 
finally, it is believed, did sink him — as Kelly. 
Indeed in the derisive messages that this deep- 
sea joker used to send over the wireless to our 
stations he customarily signed himself by that 
name. 

One day shortly before Kelly's U-boat 
disappeared altogether a commander of an 
American destroyer was sending by radio to a 
French port a message giving what he believed 
to be the probable location of the pestiferous 
but cheerful foe. It must have been that the 
subject of his communication was listening in 
on the air waves and that he knew the code 
which the American was that day employing. 
For all at once he broke in with his own wireless, 
and this was what the astonished operator at 
the receiving station on shore got : 

"Your longitude is fine, your latitude is rotten. 
This place is getting too warm for me. I'm going 
to beat it. Good-bye. Kelly." 

Shortly after the first division of our new 
National Army reached France a group of 
fifty men were sent from it as replacements in 
the ranks of an old National Guard regiment 
which had been over for some time and which 
had suffered casualties and losses. When the 
squad went forward to their new assignment 
[192] 



TRENCH ESSENCE 



the general commanding the brigade from which 
the chosen fifty had been drawn sent to the 
commander of the regiment for which they were 
bound a letter reading somewhat after this 
style: 

"There are not better men in our Army 
anywhere than the fifty I am giving you, in 
accordance with an order received by me from 
General Headquarters. Please see to it that 
no one in your regiment, whether oflScer or 
private, refers by word, look, deed or gesture to 
the circumstances under which these fifty men 
entered the service. Drafted men, regulars and 
volunteers are all on the same footing, and 
merely because my men came in with the draft 
and yours to a large extent came in a little 
earlier is no reason why any discrimination 
should be permitted in any quarter." 

A few weeks after the transfer had been 
accomplished the brigadier met the colonel, and 
recalling to the latter the sense of the letter he 
had written inquired whether there had been 
any suggestion of superiority on the part of the 
former National Guardsmen toward the new 
arrivals. 

"General," broke out the colonel, "do you 
know what those infernal cheeky scoundrels of 
yours have been doing ever since they joined? 
Well, I'm going to tell you. They've been walk- 
ing to and fro in my regiment with their noses 
stuck up in the air, calling my boys 'draft- 
dodgers!'" 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

It's the essence of the trenches. And it's 
that — ^plus the courage they bring and the 
enthusiasm they have — which is winning this 
war sooner than some of the croakers at home 
expect it to be won. 



f[194j 



CHAPTER XII 
BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMEED 



AS I GO to and fro in the land I some- 
/% times wonder why the Germans keep 
£ ^ a-picking on me. As heaven is my 
judge I tried to tell the truth about 
them and their armies when I was with them; 
but then, maybe that's the reason. At any rate 
I am here to testify that whenever I stop at a 
place in England or France either a battery of 
long-range guns shells it or else a hostile aero- 
plane happens along and bombs the town. The 
thing is more than a coincidence. It is getting 
to be a habit, an unhealthy habit at that. 
There must be method in it. And yet I have 
tried to bear myself in a modest and unostenta- 
tious way during this present trip. If in the 
reader's judgment the personal pronoun has 
occurred and recurred with considerable fre- 
quency in my writings I would say: Under the 
seemingly quaint but necessary rules of the 
censorship as conducted in these parts the only 
individual of American extraction at present 
connected in any way with war activities over 
[195] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

here whom I may mention m my writings other 
than General Pershing is myself. Since the 
general to date has not figured to any extent 
in my personal experiences I am perforce driven 
to doing pieces largely about what I have seen 
and heard and felt. 

Particularly is this true of these bombings 
and shellings. I repeat that I cannot imagine 
why the boche should single out a quiet, simple, 
private citizen for such attentions. It does not 
seem fair that I should ever be their target while 
shining marks move about the landscape with 
the utmost impunity. The German has a name 
for being efficient too. More than once in my 
readings I have seen his name coupled with the 
word efficiency. Take brigadier generals for 
example. Almost any colonel of our Expedi- 
tionary Forces in France, and particularly a 
senior colonel whose name is well up in the list, 
will tell you in confidence there are a number of 
brigadiers over here who could easily be spared 
and who would never be missed. Yet a brigadier 
general may move about from place to place in 
his automobile in comparative safety. But just 
let me go to the railroad station to buy a ticket 
for somewhere and immediately the news is 
transmitted by a mysterious occult influence to 
the Kaiser and he tells the Crown Prince and 
the Crown Prince calls up von Hindenburg or 
somebody, and inside of fifteen minutes the 
hands, August and Heinie, are either load- 
ing up the long-rangers or getting the most 
[196] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

dependable bombing Gotha out of the 
sheds. 

For nearly four weeks the raiders stayed 
away from London. I arrived in London sick 
with bronchitis and went to bed in a hotel. That 
night the Huns flew over the Channel and 
spattered down inflammables and explosives 
to their heart's content. One chunk of a shell 
fell in the street within a few yards of my bed- 
room window, gouging a hole in the roadway. 
A bomb made a mighty noise and did some 
superficial damage in a park close by. It was 
my first experience at being bombed from on 
high, and any other time I should have taken a 
lively interest in the proceedings; but I was too 
sick to get up and dress and too dopy from the 
potions I had taken to awaken thoroughly. 

But the next night, when I was convalescent, 
and the following night, when I was well along 
the road toward recovery and able, in fact, to 
sit up in bed and dodge, back came Mister Boche 
and repeated the original performance with 
variations. 

In order to get away from the London fogs, 
which weren't doing my still tender throat any 
good, I ran down to a certain peaceful little 
seaside resort on the east coast of England, 
reaching there in the gloaming. What did the 
enemy do but sprinkle bombs all about the 
neighbourhood within an hour after I got there.'* 
He went away at ten the same night, I the 
following morning at six-forty-five. 
[197] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

A delayed train was all that kept me from 
reaching Paris coincidentally with the first 
raiders who had attacked Paris in a period of 
months. The raiders covered up their disap- 
pointment by murdering a few helpless non- 
belligerents and departed, to return the next 
evening when I was present. I was domiciled 
in Paris on that memorable Saturday when the 
great long-distance gun began its bombard- 
ment of the city from the forest of Saint-Gobain 
nearly seventy miles distant. The first shell 
descended within two hundred yards of where 
I stood at a window and I saw the smoke of its 
explosion and saw the cloud of dust and pulver- 
ized debris that rose; the jar of the crash shook 
the building. Throughout the following day, 
which was Palm Sunday — only we called it 
Bomb Sunday — the shelling continued. I was 
there, naturally. 

On Monday morning I started for Soissons. 
So the gunners of the long-distance gun playing 
on Paris took a vacation, which lasted until the 
day after my party returned from the north. 
We got into the Gare du Nord late one night; 
the big gun opened up again early the next 
morning. I am not exaggerating; merely 
reciting a sequence of facts. 

For nearly two years the Germans had left 
poor battered Soissons pretty much alone, 
though it was within easy reach of their how- 
itzers; moreover, one of their speedy flying 
machines could reach Soissons from the German 
[198] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

lines south of Laon within five minutes. But, 
as I say, they rather left it alone. Perhaps in 
their kindly sentimental way they were satisfied 
with their previous handiwork there. They 
had pretty well destroyed the magnificent old 
cathedral. It was not quite so utter a ruin as 
the cathedral at Arras is, or the cathedral at 
Rheims, or the Cloth Hall at Ypres, or the Uni- 
versity at Louvain; nevertheless, I assume that 
from the Prussian point of view the job was a 
fairly complete one. 

The wonderful, venerable glass windows, 
which can never be replaced, had been shattered 
to the last one, and the lines of the splendid 
dome might now only be traced like the curves 
of tottering arches, swinging up and out like 
the ribs of a cadaver, and by a lacework of 
roofage where thousands of bickering ravens, 
those black devil birds of desolation, now 
fluttered and cawed, and befouled with their 
droppings the profaned sanctuary below. 
Altogether it was one of the most satisfactory 
monuments to Kultur to be found anywhere in 
Europe to-day. 

Nor had the community at large been slighted. 
Everybody knows how thorough are the armies 
of the anointed War Lord. Relics which 
dated back to the days of Clovis had been 
battered out of all hope of restoration; things 
of antiquity and of inestimable historic value 
lay sliattered in wreckage. Furthermore, from 
time to time, in 1914 and 1915 and even in 
[199] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

1916, when no military advantage was to be 
derived from visiting renewed affliction upon 
the vicinity and when no victims, save old men 
and women and innocent children, were likely 
to be added to the grand total of the grander 
tally which Satan, as chief bookkeeper, is 
keeping for the Kaiser, the guns had blasted 
away at the ancient city, leveling a homestead 
here and decimating a family there. 

However, since the early part of 1916 they 
had somehow rather spared Soissons. But the 
train bearing us was halted within three miles 
of the station because, after keeping the peace 
for nearly two years, the enemy had picked 
upon that particular hour of that particular 
afternoon to renew his most insalubrious at- 
tentions per nine-inch mortars. Therefore we 
entered afoot, bearing our luggage, to the accom- 
paniment of whistling projectiles and clattering 
chimney-pots and smashing walls. 

In Soissons we spent two nights. Both 
nights the Germans shelled the town and on 
the second night, in addition, bombed it from 
aeroplanes. It may have been fancy, but as 
we came away in a car borrowed from a kindly 
French staff officer it seemed to us that the 
firing behind us was lessening. 

From press headquarters near G. H. Q. of 
the Amex Forces we motored one day to Nancy 
for a good dinner at a locally famous cafe. 
Simultaneously with our advent the foe's air- 
men showed up and the alerte was sounded 

[200] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

for a gas attack. As between the prospect of 
spending the evening in an abri and staying 
out in the open air upon the road we chose the 
latter, and so we turned tail and ran back to 
the comparative quiet of the front lines. A 
Kttle later a cross-country journey necessitated 
our changing cars at Bar-le-Duc. The connect- 
ing train was hours behind its appointed min- 
ute, as is usual in these days of disordered time 
cards, and while we waited hostile airships ap- 
peared flying so high they looked like bright 
iridescent midges flitting in the sunshine. As 
they swung lower, to sow bombs about the 
place, antiaircraft guns opened on them and 
they departed. 

That same night our train, travelling with 
darkened carriages, was held up outside of 
Chalons, while enemy aircraft spewed bombs 
at the tracks ahead of us and at a troop convoy 
passing through. The wreckage was afire when 
we crawled by on a snail's schedule an hour 
or so later. 

Two of us went to pay a visit to a regimental 
mess in a sector held by our troops. The 
colonel's headquarters were in a small wrecked 
village close up to the frontier. This village 
had been pretty well smashed up in 1914 and 
in 1915, but during the trench warfare that 
succeeded in this district no German shells had 
scored a direct hit within the communal con- 
fines. Yet the enemy that night, without prior 
warning and without known provocation, elect- 

[201 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

ed to break the tacit agreement for localised 
immunity. The bombardment began with a 
shock and a jar of impact shortly after we had 
retired to bed on pallets upon the floor in the 
top story of what once, upon a happier time, 
had been the home of a prominent citizen. It 
continued for three hours, and I will state that 
our rest was more or less interrupted. It slack- 
ened and ceased, though, as we departed in 
the morning after breakfast, and thereafter 
for a period of weeks during which we remained 
away all was tranquil and unconcussive there 
in that cluster of shattered stone cottages. 

Another time we made a two-day expedition 
to the zone round Verdun. The great spring 
offensive, off and away to the westward, was 
then in its second week and the Verdun area 
enjoyed comparative peace. Nevertheless, and 
to the contrary notwithstanding, seven big 
vociferous shells came pelting down upon an 
obscure hamlet well back behind the main de- 
fences within twenty minutes after we had 
stopped there. One burst in a courtyard out- 
side a house where an American general was 
domiciled with his staff, and when we came in 
to pay our respects his aids still were gathering 
up fragments of the shell casing for souvenirs. 
The general said he couldn't imagine why the 
Hun should have decided all of a sudden to 
pay him this compliment; but we knew why, 
or thought we knew: It was all a part of the 
German scheme to give us chronic cold feet. 

[202] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

At least, we so diagnosed the thing privately. 
As a result of this sort of experience, con- 
tinuing through a period of months, I feel that 
I have become an adept of sorts at figuring the 
sensations of a bombee. I flatter myself also 
that I have acquired some slight facility at 
appraising the psychology of towns and cities 
persistently and frequently under shell or aerial 
attack. In the main I believe it may be taken 
as an accepted fact that the inhabitants of a 
small place behave after rather a different 
fashion from the way in which the inhabitants 
of a great city may be counted upon to bear 
themselves. For example, there is a difference 
plainly to be distinguished, I think, between 
the people of London and the people of Paris; 
and a difference likewise between the people of 
Paris and the people of Nancy. Certainly I have 
witnessed a great number of sights that were 
humorous with the grim and perilous humour 
of wartimes, and by the same token I have 
witnessed a manifold number of others that 
were fraught with the very essence of trag- 
edy. 

All France to-day is one vast heart-breaking 
tragedy that is compounded of a million lesser 
tragedies. You note that the door-opener at 
your favourite cafe in Paris uses his left hand 
only, and then you see that his right arm, with 
the hand cased in a tight glove, swings in stiff 
uselessness from his shoulder. It is an artificial 
arm; the real one was shot away. The barber 
[203] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

who shaves you, the waiter who serves you, 
the chauffeur who drives you about in his taxi- 
cab moves with a Hmping awkward gait that 
betrays the fact of a false leg harnessed to a 
mutilated stump. 

In a suflSciently wide passage a couple coming 
toward you — a woman in nurse's garb and a 
splendid young boy soldier with decorations 
on his breast — bump into you, almost, it would 
seem, by intent. As mentally you start to 
execrate the careless pair for their inexcusable 
disregard of the common rights of pedestrians 
you see there is a deep, newly healed scar in 
the youth's temple and that his eyes stare 
straight ahead of him with an unwinking 
emptiness of expression, and that his fine young 
face is beginning to wear that look of blank, 
bleak resignation which is the mark of one who 
will walk for all the rest of his days on this 
earth in the black and utter void of blindness. 

Behind the battle lines you often see long 
lines of men whose ages are anywhere between 
forty and fifty — tired, dirty, bewhiskered men 
worn frazzle-thin by what they have under- 
gone; men who should be at home with their 
wives and bairns instead of toiling through 
wet and cold and misery for endless leagues 
over sodden roads. 

Their backs are bent beneath great unwieldy 
burdens; their hands where they grip their 
rifles are blue from the chill; their sore and 
weary feet falter as they drag them, booted in 

[204] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

stiff leather and bolstered with mud, from one 
cheerless billet to another. But they go on, 
uncomplainingly, as they have been going on 
uncomplainingly since the second year of this 
war, doing the thankless and unheroic labour 
at the back that the ranks at the front may be 
kept filled with those whom France has left of 
a suitable age for fighting. 

You see that the highways are kept in repair 
by boys of twelve or thirteen and by grandsires 
in their seventies and their eighties, and by 
crippled soldiers, who work from daylight until 
dusk upon the rock piles and the earth heaps; 
that the fields are being tilled — and how well 
they are being tilled! — by young women and 
old women; that the shops in the smaller towns 
are minded by children, whose heads some- 
times scarcely come above the counters. 

You see where the tall shade trees along the 
roads and the small trees in the thickets are 
being shorn away in order that the furnaces and 
the hearthstones may not be altogether fireless, 
since the enemy holds most of the coal mines. 
I have come in one of the fine state forests 
upon a squad of American lumberjacks, big 
huskies from the logging camps of Northern 
Michigan, with their portable planing mill 
whining and their axes flashing, making the 
sawdust and the chips fly, in what once not 
long ago was a grove of splendid timber, where 
beeches and chestnuts, hundreds of years old, 
stood in close ranks; but which now is being 
[205] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

turned into a wilderness of raw stumps and 
trodden earth and stacks of ugly planking. 

You see an old woman, as fleshless as a 
fagot, helping a dog to drag a heavy cart up a 
rocky street, the two of them together strain- 
ing and panting against the leather breast 
yokes. For every kilometre that the foe ad- 
vances you see the refugees fleeing from their 
desolated steadings; indeed, you may very 
accurately gauge the rate of his progress by 
their number. 

In one lonely little town in a territory as yet 
undefiled by actual hostilities I went one morn- 
ing not long ago into a quaint thirteenth-cen- 
tury church. It was one of three churches in 
the place; and in point of membership, I think, 
the smallest of the three. But in the nave, 
upon a stone pillar, gnawed by time with fur- 
rows and runnels, I found a little framed placard 
containing the names, written in fine script, of 
those communicants who had died in service 
for their country in this war. The list plainly 
was incomplete. It included only those who 
had fallen up to the beginning of last year; the 
toll for 1917 and for 1918 was yet to be added; 
and yet of the names of the dead out of this one 
small obscure interior parish there were an 
even one hundred. I dare say the poll of the 
whole commune would have shown at least 
three times as many. France has shown the 
world how to fight. Now it shows the world 
how to die. 

[206] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

But of all the tragedies that multiply them- 
selves so abundantly here in this bloodied land 
it sometimes seems to me there is none greater 
than the look of things that is implanted upon 
an unfortified town that has been subjected to 
frequent bombings. It is not so much the shat- 
tered, ragged ruins where bombs have scored 
direct downward hits that drive home the lesson 
of what this mode of reprisal, this type of pun- 
ishment means; rather it is the echoing empty 
street, as yet undamaged, whence the dwellers 
all have fled — long stretches of streets, with the 
windows shuttered up and the shops locked and 
barred and the rank grass sprouting between the 
cobblestones, and the starveling tabby cats 
foraging like the gaunt ghosts of cats among 
forgotten ash barrels. And rather more than 
this it is the expression of those who through 
necessity or choice have stayed on. 

I am thinking particularly of Nancy — Nancy 
which for environment, setting and architecture 
is one of the most beautiful little cities in the 
world; a city whose ancient walls and massy 
gateways still stand; whose squares and parks 
were famous; and whose people once led pros- 
perous, contented and peaceful lives. Its 
Place Stanislaus, on a miniature scale, is, I 
think, as lovely as any plaza in Europe. Since 
it is so lovely one is moved to wonder why the 
Germans have so far spared it from the ruina- 
tion they shower down without abatement 
upon the devoted city. It is well-nigh deserted 
[207] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

now, along with all the other parts of the town. 
Those who could conveniently get away have 
gone; the state in the early part of this year 
transported thousands of women and children 
on special trains to safer territory in the south 
of France. Those who remain have in their eyes 
the haunting terror of a persistent and an un- 
ceasing fearsomeness. 

To be in Nancy these times is to be in a 
stilled, half-deserted place of flinching and of 
danger, and of the death that comes by night, 
borne on whirring motors. I walked through 
its streets on a day following one of the fre- 
quent air raids and I had a conception of how 
these Old- World cities must have looked in the 
time of the plague. The citizens I passed were 
like people who dwelt beneath the shadow of 
an abiding pestilence, as indeed they did. 

To them a clear still night with the placid 
stars showing in the heavens meant a terrible 
threat. It meant that they would lie quaking 
in their houses for the signal that would send 
them to the cellars and the dugouts, while high 
explosives and gas bombs and inflammable 
bombs came raining down. They knew full 
well what it meant to stay above ground during 
the dread passover of the Huns' planes, when 
hospitals had been turned into shambles and 
supply depots into craters of raging fire. Yet 
there remained traces of the racial tempera- 
ment that has upbuoyed the French and helped 
them to endure what was unendurable. 
;[ 208 ] 



BEING BOMBED AND RE-BOMBED 

A little waitress in a cafe said to three of us, 
with a smile: "Ah, but you should be in Nancy 
on a rainy night, for then the sound of snoring 
fills the place. We can sleep then — and how 
we do sleep!" 

In Nancy they pray before the high altars 
for bad weather and yet more bad weather. 
And so do they in many another town in 
France that is within easy striking distance of 
the enemy's batteries and airdromes. 



[209 J 



CHAPTER XIII 
LONDON UNDER RAID-PUNISHMENT 

OF all city dwellers I am sure the Lon- 
doner is the most orderly and the most 
capable of self-government, as he like- 
wise is the most phlegmatic. Because 
of these common traits among the masses of the 
populace an air raid over London, considering 
its potential possibilities for destruction, is 
comparatively an unexciting episode every- 
where in the metropolis, save and except only 
in those districts of the East End where the 
bulk of the foreign-born live. There, on the 
first wail of the shrieking sirens, before the 
warning "maroon" bombs go up or the barrage 
fire starts from protecting batteries in the sub- 
urbs and along the Thames, these frightened 
aliens, carrying their wives and children, flock 
pell-mell into the stations of the Underground. 
They spread out bedclothes on the platforms 
and camp in the Tube, which is the English 
name for what Americans call a subway, and 
sometimes refuse to budge until long after the 
danger has passed. At the height of the bom- 
[210] 



LONDON UNDER RAID-PUNISHMENT 

bardment they pray and shriek, and the women 
often beat their breasts and tear at their hair 
in a very frenzy. 

But this is true only of the emotional Rus- 
sians and Rumanians. The native Londoners 
proceed in the most leisurely fashion to the 
subterranean shelters. Indeed, the chief task 
of the police is to keep them from exposing 
themselves in the open in efforts to get a sight 
of the enemy. People who live on the lower 
jfloors of stoutly built houses mainly bide where 
they are, their argument — and a very sane one 
it is — being that since the chances of a man's 
being killed in his home at such a time are no 
greater than of his roof being pierced by light- 
ning during a thunderstorm he is almost as 
safe and very much more comfortable staying 
in his bed than he would be squatting for hours 
in a damp cellar. 

No matter how intense the bombardment 
the busses keep on running, though they have 
few enough passengers. From one's window 
one may see the big double-deckers lumbering 
by like frightened elephants, empty of all but 
the drivers and the plucky women conductors, 
who invariably stick to their posts and carry on. 
The London bobby promenades at his usual 
deliberate pace no matter how thick the shrapnel 
from the defender guns may splash down about 
him in the darkened street; and the night 
postman calmly goes his rounds too. 

One night in London after the alarm had 
[211] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

been sounded I invaded the series of walled 
caverns and wine vaults known as the Adelphi 
Arches, which are just off the Strand, near 
Charing Cross. Several hundred men, women 
and children had already taken refuge there. 
Near one of the entrances a young mother was 
singing her baby to sleep; a little farther on a 
group of Australian soldiers were trying, rather 
unsuccessfully, to open beer bottles with their 
finger nails; and at the mouth of a side base- 
ment opening off a layer cave half a dozen 
typical Londoner civilians, of the sort who wear 
flat caps instead of hats and woollen necker- 
chiefs instead of collars, were warmly dis- 
cussing politics in high nasal notes. Nowhere 
was there evident any concern or distress, or 
even any considerable amount of irritation at 
our enforced inconvenience. 

Still, any man who figures that the English- 
man is not stimulated to stouter resistance by 
these visitations from the German would be 
mistaken. Beneath the surface of his apparent 
indifference there is produced at each recur- 
rent attack an enhanced current of hate for 
the government that first inaugurated this 
system of barbaric warfare against unfortified 
communities. There is something so radically 
wrong in the Prussian propaganda it is in- 
conceivable that any mind save a Prussian's 
mind could have conceived it. His imagination 
is on backward and he thinks hind part before. 
In the folly of his besetting madness he figures 

[212 ] 



LONDON UNDER RAID-PUNISHMENT 

that he can subjugate a man by mangling that 
man's wife and baby to bits — the one thing 
that has always been potent to make a valiant 
fighter out of the veriest coward that lives. 

They may not waste their rage in vain and 
vulgar mouthings — that would be the German, 
not the English way — but one may be sure that 
the people of London will never forgive the 
Kaiser for the hideous things his agents, in 
accordance with his policy of frightfulness, 
have wrought among innocent noncombatants 
in their city and in their island. They are 
entering up the balance in the ledgers of their 
righteous indignaiion against the day of final 
reckoning. 

After I had seen personally some of the 
results of one of the nocturnal onslaughts I 
too could share in the feelings of those more 
directly affected, for I could realise that, given 
an opportunity now denied him by the mercy 
of distance and much intervening salt water, 
the Hun would be doing unto American cities 
what he had done to this English city; and I 
could picture the same unspeakable atrocities 
perpetrated upon New Haven or Asbury Park 
or Charleston as have been perpetrated upon 
London and Dover and Margate. 

There was an old clergyman of the Estab- 
lished Church who lived in a rectory not far 
from Covent Garden, a man near seventy, 
who probably had never wittingly done an 
evil thing or a cruel thing in all his correct 
[213] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

and godly life. He came to have the name of 
the Raid Preacher, because at every aerial 
attack he went forth fearlessly from his home, 
making the tour of all the shelters in the neigh- 
bourhood. At each place he would cheer and 
quiet the crowds there assembled, telling them 
there was no real danger, reading to them 
comforting passages of the Scriptures and en- 
couraging them to sing homely and familiar 
songs. He had been doing this from the time 
when the Zeppelins first invaded the London 
district. He had held funeral services over 
the bodies of hundreds of raid victims, so they 
told me. Regardless of the religious affilia- 
tions of the dead, or the lack of church ties, 
their families almost invariably asked him to 
conduct the burials. 

One night in the present year — I am for- 
bidden to give the exact date or the exact 
place, though neither of them matters now — 
the raiders came. The old clergyman hurried 
to a cellar under a near-by business establish- 
ment, where a swarm of tenement dwellers of 
the quarter had congregated for safety. He 
was standing in their midst in the darkened 
place, bidding them to be of good and tranquil 
faith, when a two-hundred pound bomb of 
high explosives, sped from a Gotha eight 
thousand feet above and aimed by chance, 
came through the building, bringing the roof 
and the upper floors with it. 

A great many persons were killed or wounded. 

[214] 



LONDON UNDER RAID-PUNISHMENT 

When the rescuers came almost the first body 
they brought out of the burning ruins was 
that of the Raid Preacher. They had found 
him, with torn flesh and broken bones, but 
with his face unmarred, lying on the floor. 
His thumbed leather Bible was under him, 
open at a certain page, and there was blood 
upon its leaves. 

Men who saw his funeral cortege told me of 
it with tears in their eyes. They said that 
people of all faiths walked in the rain behind 
the hearse, and that the biggest of all the 
funeral wreaths was a gift from a little colony 
of poor Jewish folk in the district, and that 
one whole section of the sorrowful procession 
was made up of cripples and convalescents — 
pale, lame, halt men and women and children 
who limped on crutches or marched with 
bandaged heads or with twisted trunks; and 
these were the injured survivors of previous 
raids, to whom the dead man had ministered 
in their time of suffering. 

In a hospital I saw a little girl who had been 
most terribly maimed by the same missile 
that killed the old rector. I am not going to 
dwell on the state of this child. When I 
think of her I have not the words to express 
the feelings that I have. But one of her hands 
was gone at the wrist, and the other hand was 
badly shattered; so she was just a wan little 
brutally abbreviated fragment of humanity, 
a living fraction, most grievously afflicted. 

[215] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Her wounds had ceased to pain her, the head 
nurse told me before we entered, and for the 
rest of the time she was a good patient, one 
of the best in the ward. 

She was lying, when I saw her, with her head 
propped upon a pillow that was no whiter than 
her face was, and there was the pitiable wraith 
of a smile on her poor little pinched common- 
place face, and to her breast, with the bandaged 
stump of one arm and with her remaining hand 
that was swarthed in a clump of wrapping, she 
cuddled up a painted china doll which some- 
body had brought her; and she was singing 
to it. The sight, I take it, would have been 
very gracious in the eyes of His Imperial 
Majesty of Prussia — except, of course, that 
the little girl still lived; that naturally would 
be a drawback to his complete enjoyment of 
the spectacle. 



[216] 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 

THERE was mingled comedy and woe in 
the scenes at Paris on the memorable 
day when the great long-distance gun — 
which the Parisians promptly christened 
"Big Bertha" in tribute to the titular mistress 
of the Krupp works where it was produced — 
first opened upon the city from seventy-odd 
miles away and thereby established, among 
other records, a precedent for distance and 
scope in artillery bombardments. Paris was 
in a fit mood for emotion. The people were on 
edge; their nerves tensed, for there had been 
an alarm the evening before. The raiding 
planes had been turned back at the suburbs 
and driven off by the barrage fire, but the 
populace mainly had flocked into the abris 
and the underground stations of the Metro- 
politain. 

At ten o'clock that night, after the danger 
was over, a funny thing occurred: The crew 
of a motor-drawn fire engine had fuddled them- 
selves with wine, and for upward of half an 
[217] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

hour the driver drove his red wagon at top 
speed up and down the Rue de Rivoli, past the 
Tuileries Gardens. With him he had four of 
his confreres in blue uniforms and brass helmets. 
These rode two on a side behind him, their 
helmets shining in the bright moonlight like 
pots of gold turned upside down; and as they 
rode the two on one side sounded the alerte 
signal on sirens, and the two on the other side 
sounded the "all clear" on bugles; and between 
blasts all four rocked in their places with joy 
over their little joke. 

In London the thing would have constituted 
a public scandal; in New York there would 
have been a newspaper hullabaloo over it. It 
was typical of Paris, I think, that the street 
crowds became infected with the spirit which 
filled the roistering firemen and cheered them 
as they went merrily racketing back and forth. 
Nor, so far as I could ascertain, were the fire- 
men disciplined; at least there was no mention 
in print of the incident, though a great many 
persons, the writer included, witnessed it. 

At seven o'clock the following morning I was 
standing at the window of my bedchamber 
when something of a very violent and a highly 
startling nature went off just beyond the line 
of housetops and tree tops which hedged my 
horizon view to the northward. Another 
booming detonation, and yet another, followed 
in close succession. I figured to my own satis- 
faction that one of the enemy planes which 
[ 218 ] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



were chased away the night before had taken 
advantage of the cloaking mists of the new day 
to sHp back and pay his outrageous compHments 
to an unsuspecting municipaHty. Anyhow a 
fellow becomes accustomed to the sounds of 
loud noises in wartimes, and after a while ceases 
to concern himself greatly about their causes 
or even their effects unless the disturbances 
transpire in his immediate proximity. Life in 
wartime in a country where the war is consists 
largely in getting used to things that are ab- 
normal and unusual. One takes as a matter 
of course occurrences that in peace would 
throw his entire scheme of existence out of 
gear. He is living, so to speak, in a world that 
is turned upside down, amid a jumble of acute 
and violent contradictions, both physical and 
metaphysical. 

With two companions I set out for a certain 
large hotel which had the reputation of being 
able to produce genuine North American break- 
fasts for North American appetites. In the 
main grillroom we had just finished compiling 
an order, which included fried whiting, ham 
and eggs, country style, and fried potatoes, 
when a fire-department truck went shrieking 
through the street outside, its whistle blasting 
away as though it had a scared banshee locked 
up in its brazen throat. 

There were not many persons in the room — 
to your average Frenchman his dinner is a 
holy rite, but his breakfast is a trifling inci- 
[219] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

dent — but most of these persons rose from their 
tables and straightway departed. The woman 
cashier hurried off with her hat on sidewise, 
which among women the world over is a thing 
betokening agitation. 

The head waiter approached us with our bill 
in his tremulous hand, and bowing, wished to 
know whether messieurs would be so good as 
to settle the account now. By his manner he 
sought to indicate that such was the custom 
of the house. We told him firmly that we 
would pay after we had eaten and not a minute 
sooner. He gave a despairing gesture and van- 
ished, leaving the slip upon the tablecloth. 
Somebody hastily deposited within our reach 
the food we had ordered and withdrew. 

Before we were half through eating a very 
short, very frightened-looking boy in buttons 
appeared at our elbows, pleading to know 
whether we were ready for our hats and canes. 
Since he appeared to be in some haste about 
it and since he was so small a small boy and so 
uneasy, we told him to bring them along. He 
did bring them along, practically instantane- 
ously, in fact, and promptly was begone with- 
out waiting for a tip — an omission which up 
until this time had never marred the traditional 
ethics of hat-check boys either in France or 
anywhere else. 

Presently it dawned upon us that as far as 
appearances went we were entirely alone in 
the heart of a great city. So when we were 
[ 220 ] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



througli eating we left the amount of the 
breakfast bill upon a plate and ourselves de- 
parted from there. The lobby of the hotel 
and the office and the main hallway were en- 
tirely deserted, there being neither guests nor 
functionaries in sight. But through a grating 
in the floor came up a gush of hot air, licking 
our legs as we passed. This may have been 
the flow from a unit of the heating plant, or 
then again it may have been the hot and fever- 
ish breathing of the habitues of that hotel, 
'scaping upward through a vent in the sub- 
cellar's roof. 

Outside, in the streets, the shopkeepers had 
put up their iron shutters. At intervals the 
plug-plug-blooie ! of fresh explosions punctuated 
the hooting of fire engines racing with the 
alarm in adjacent quarters. Overhead, ranging 
and quartering the upper reaches of the sky, 
like pointer dogs in a sedge field, were scores 
of French aeroplanes searching, and searching 
vainly, for the unseen foeman. 

The thing was uncanny; it was daunting and 
smacked of witchcraft. Here were the pro- 
jectiles dropping down, apparently from di- 
rectly above, and they were bursting in various 
sections, to the accompaniments of clattering 
debris and shattering glass; and yet there was 
neither sight nor sound of the agencies respon- 
sible for the attack. All sorts of rumours 
spread, each to find hundreds of earnest advo- 
cates and as many more vociferous purveyors. 
[221] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

One theory, often advanced and generally- 
retailed, was that the Germans had produced 
a new type of aeroplane, with a noiseless motor, 
and capable of soaring at a height where it was 
invisible to the naked eye. Another possible 
solution for the enigma was that with the aid of 
spies and traitors the Germans had set up a 
gun fired by air compression upon a housetop 
in the environs and were bombarding the city 
from beneath the protection of a false roof. In 
the doorway of every abri the credulous and 
the incredulous held heated arguments, dodging 
back under shelter, like prairie dogs into their 
holes, at each recurring crash. 

Presently it dawned upon the hearkening 
groups that the missiles were falling at stated 
and ordained periods. Twenty minutes regu- 
larly intervened between smashes. Apprecia- 
tion of this circumstance injected a new ele- 
ment of surmise into a terrific and most pro- 
foundly puzzling affair. This was a mystery 
that grew momentarily more mysterious. 

Business for the time being was pretty much 
suspended; anyhow nearly everybody appeared 
to be taking part in the debates. However, 
the taxicabs were still plying. A Parisian cabby 
may be trusted to take a chance on his life 
if there is a fare in sight and the prospect of a 
pourboire to follow. Two of us engaged a 
weather-beaten individual who apparently had 
no interest in the controversies raging about 
him or in the shelling either; and in his rig we 
[ 222 ] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



drove to the scene of the first explosion, arriv- 
ing there within a few minutes after the deviHsh 
cyhnder fell. 

There had been loss of life here — no great 
amount as loss of life is measured these times 
in this country, but attended by conditions 
that made the disaster hideous and distressing. 
The blood of victims still trickled in runlets 
between the paving stones where we walked, 
and there were mangled bodies stretched on 
the floor of an improvised morgue across the 
way — mainly bodies of poor working women, 
and one, I heard, the body of a widow with 
half a dozen children, who now would be doubly 
orphaned, since their father was dead at the 
Front. 

Back again at my hotel after a forenoon 
packed with curious experiences, I found in 
my quarters a very badly scared chambermaid, 
trying to tidy a room with fingers that shook. 
In my best French, which I may state is the 
worst possible French, I was trying to explain 
to her that the bombardment had probably 
ended — and for a fact there had been a forty- 
minute lull in the new frightfulness — when one 
of the shells struck and went off among the 
trees and flowerbeds of a public breathing place 
not a hundred and fifty yards away. With a 
shriek the maid fell on her knees and buried 
her head, ostrich fashion, in a nest of sofa 
pillows. 

I stepped through my bedroom window upon 
[223] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

a little balcony in time to see the dust cloud 
rise in a column and to follow with my eyes 
the frenzied whirlings of a great flock of wood 
pigeons flighting high into the air from their 
roosting perches in the park plot. The next 
instant I felt a violent tugging at the back 
breadth of the leather harness that I wore. 
Unwittingly, in her panic the maid had struck 
upon the only possible use to which a Sam 
Browne belt may be put — other than the orna- 
mental, and that is a moot point among fanciers 
of the purely decorative in the matter of mili- 
tary gearing for the human form. By accident 
she had divined its one utilitarian purpose. 
She had risen and with both hands had laid 
hold upon the crosspiece of my main surcingle 
and was striving to drag me inside. I rather 
gathered from the tenor of her contemporaneous 
remarks, which she uttered at the top of her 
voice and into which she interjected the names 
of several saints, that she feared the sight of 
me in plain view on that stone ledge might 
incite the invisible marauder to added excesses. 
But I was the larger and stronger of the two, 
and my buckles held, and I had the advantage 
of an iron railing to cling to. After a short 
struggle my would-be rescuer lost. She turned 
loose of my kickiiig straps and breech bands, 
and making hurried reference to various names 
in the calendar of the canonised she fled from 
my presence. I heard her falling down the stairs 
to the floor below. The next day I had a new 
[ 224 ] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



chambermaid; this one had tendered her res- 
ignation. 

Not until the middle of the afternoon was 
the proper explanation for the phenomenon 
forthcoming. It came then from the Min- 
istry of War, in the bald and unembroidered 
laconics of a formal communique. At the first 
time of hearing it the announcement seemed 
so inconceivable, so manifestly impossible that 
official sanction was needed to make men believe 
Teuton ingenuity had found a way to upset 
all the previously accepted principles touching 
on gravity and friction; on arcs and orbits; 
on aims and directions; on projectiles and 
projectives; on the resisting tensility of steel 
bores and on the carrying power of gun charges 
— by producing a cannon with a ranging scope 
of somewhere between sixty and ninety miles. 

Days of bombardment followed — days which 
culminated on that never-to-be-forgotten Good 
Friday when malignant chance sped a shell 
to wreck one of the oldest churches in Paris 
and to kill seventy-five and wound ninety 
worshippers gathered beneath its roof. 

After the first flurry of uncertainty the 
populace for the most part grew tranquil; 
now that they knew the origin of the far-flung 
punishment there was measurably less dread 
of the consequences among the masses of the 
people. On days when the shells exploded 
futilely the daily press and the comedians in 
the music halls made jokes at the expense of 
[225] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Big Bertha; as, for example, on a day when a 
fragment of shell took the razor out of the hand 
of a man who was shaving himself, without 
doing him the slightest injury; and again 
when a whole shell wrecked a butcher shop 
and strewed the neighbourhood with kidneys 
and livers and rib ends of beef, but spared the 
butcher and his family. On days when the 
colossal piece scored a murderous coup for 
its masters and took innocent life, the papers 
printed the true death lists without attempt 
at concealment of the ravages of the monster. 
And on all the bombardment days, women 
went shopping in the Rue de la Paix; children 
played in the parks; the flower women of the 
Madeleine sold their wares to customers with 
the reverberations of the explosions booming 
in their ears ; the crowds that sat sipping coloured 
drinks at small tables in front of the boulevard 
cafes on fair afternoons were almost as numerous 
as they had been before the persistent thing 
started; and unless the sound was very loud 
indeed the average promenader barely lifted 
his or her head at each recurring report. In 
America we look upon the French as an excit- 
able race, but here they offered to the world a 
pattern for the practice of fortitude. 

A good many people departed from Paris 
to the southward. However, there was calm- 
ness under constant danger. Our own people, 
who were in Paris in numbers mounting up 
into the thousands^ likewise set a fine example 
[226] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



of sang-froid. On the evening of the opening 
day of the bombarding, when any one might 
have been pardoned for being a bit jumpy, an 
audience of enhsted men which packed the 
American Soldiers and Sailors' Club in the 
Rue Royale was gathered to hear a jazz band 
play Yankee tunes and afterward to hear an 
amateur speaker make an address. The can- 
non had suspended its annoying performances 
with the going down of the sun, but just as the 
speaker stood up by the piano the alerte for 
an air attack — which, by the way, proved to 
be a false alarm, after all — was heard outside. 

There was a little pause, and a rustling of 
bodies. 

Then the man, who was on his feet, spoke 
up. "I'll stay as long as any one else does," 
he said. "Anyhow, I don't know which is 
likely to be the worse of two evils — ^my poor 
attempts at entertaining you inside or the 
boche's threatened performances outside." 

A great yell of approval went up and not 
a single person left the building until after 
the chairman announced that the programme 
for the evening had reached its conclusion. I 
know this to be a fact because I was among 
those present. 

To be sure, the strain of the harassment 
got upon the nerves of some; that would be 
inevitable, human nature being what it is. 
Attendance at the theatres, especially for the 
matinees, fell off appreciably; this, though, 
[227] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

being attributable, I think, more to fear of 
panic inside the buildings than to fear of what 
the missiles might do to the buildings them- 
selves. And there was no record of any in- 
dividual, whether man or woman, quitting a 
post of responsibility because of the personal 
peril to which all alike were exposed. 

Likewise on those days when the great gun 
functioned promptly at twenty-minute inter- 
vals one would see men sitting in drinking 
places with their eyes glued to the faces of their 
wrist watches while they waited for the next 
crash. For those whose nerves lay close to 
their skins this damnable regularity of it was 
the worst phase of the thing. 

There was something so characteristically and 
atrociously German, something so hellishly 
methodical in the tormenting certainty that 
each hour would be divided into three equal 
parts by three descending steel tubes of potential 
destruction. 

Big Bertha operated on a perfect schedule. 
She opened up daily at seven a. m. sharp; she 
quit at six-twenty p. m. It was as though the 
crew that tended her carried union cards. 
They were never tardy. Neither did they work 
overtime. But if the Prussians counted upon 
bedeviling the people into panic and distracting 
the industrial and social economies of Paris 
they missed their guess. They made some 
people desperately unhappy, no doubt, and 
they frightened some; but the true organism 

[ 228 ] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



of the community remained serene and un- 
impaired. 

Some share of this, I figure might be attrib- 
uted to the facts that in a city as great as 
Paris the chances of any one individual being 
killed were so greatly reduced that the very 
size of the town served to envelop its inhabi- 
tants with a sense of comparative immunity; 
the number of buildings, and their massiveness 
inspired a feeling of partial security. I know I 
felt safer than I have felt out in the open when 
the enemy's playful batteries were searching 
out the terrain round about. In a smaller city 
this condition probably would not have been 
manifest to the same degree. There almost 
everybody would be likely to know personally 
the latest victim or to be familiar with the 
latest scene of damage and this would serve 
doubtlessly to bring the apprehensive home to 
all households. Howsoever, be the underlying 
cause what it might, Paris weathered the 
brunt of the ordeal with splendid fortitude and 
an admirable coolness. 

Being frequently in Paris between visits to 
one or another sector of the front, I was able 
to keep a fairly accurate score in the ravages of 
the bombardment and to get a fairly average 
appraisal of the effects upon the Parisian 
temper. Likewise by reading translated ex- 
tracts out of German newspapers I got impres- 
sions of another phase of the tragedy which 
almost was as vivid as though I had been an 

[ 229 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

eye witness to events which I knew of only at 
second-hand from the published descriptions 
of them. 

I had the small advantage though on my side 
of being able to vizualise the setting in the 
Forest of St. Gobain, to the west of Laon for 
I was there once in German company. I 
could conjure up a presentiment of the scene 
there enacted on the day when Big Bertha's 
makers and masters sprang their well-guarded 
surprise, which so carefully and so secretly 
had been evolved during months of planning 
and constructing and experimentations. Behold 
then the vision: It is a fine spring morning. 
There is dew on the grass and there is song 
in the throats of the birds and young foliage 
is upon the trees. The great grey gun — it is 
nearly ninety feet long and according to in- 
spired Teutonic chronicles resembles a vast 
metal crone — squats its misshapen mass upon 
a prepared concrete base in the edge of the 
woods, just on the timbered shoulder of a hill. 
Its long muzzle protrudes at an angle from the 
interlacing boughs of the thicket where it hides; 
at a very steep angle, too, since the charge it 
will fire must ascend twenty miles into the 
air in order to reach its objective. Behind 
it is a stenciling of white birches and slender 
poplars flung up against -the sky line; in front 
of it is a disused meadow where the newly 
minted coinage of a prodigal springtime — 
dandelions that are like gold coins and wild 
[ 230 ] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



marguerites that are like silver ones — spangle 
the grass as though the profligate season had 
strewn its treasures broadcast there. The gun- 
ners make ready the monster for its dedication. 
They open its great navel and slide into its 
belly a steel shell nine inches thick and three 
feet long nearly and girthed with beltings of 
spun brass. The supreme moment is at hand. 

From a group of staff officers advances a 
small man, grown old beyond his time; this 
man wears the field uniform of a Prussian 
field marshal. He has a sword at his side 
and spurs on his booted feet and a spiked hel- 
met upon his head. He has a withered arm 
which dangles abortively, foreshortened out 
of its proper length. His hair is almost snow- 
white and his moustache with its fiercely up- 
turned and tufted ends is white. From between 
slitted lids imbedded in his skull behind un- 
healthy dropical pouches of flesh his brooding, 
morbid eyes show as two blue dots, like touches 
of pale light glinting on twin disks of shallow 
polished agate. He bears himself with a mien 
that either is imperial or imperious, depending 
upon one's point of view. 

While all about him bow almost in the manner 
of priests making obeisance before a shrine, 
he touches with one sacred finger the button 
of an electrical controller. The air is blasted 
and the earth rocks then to the loudest crash 
that ever issued from the mouth of a gun; 
for all its bulk and weight the cannon recoils 

[231 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

on its carriage and shakes itself; the tree tops 
quiver in a palsy. The young grass is flattened 
as though by a sudden high wind blowing 
along the ground; the frightened birds flutter 
about and are mute. 

The bellowing echoes die away in a fainter 
and yet fainter cadence. The-Anointed-of- 
God turns up his good wrist to consider the 
face of the watch strapped thereon; his staff 
follow his royal example. One minute passes 
in a sort of sacerdotal silence. There is drama 
in the pause; a fine theatricalism in the inter- 
lude. Two minutes, two minutes and a half 
pass. This is one part of the picture; there is 
another part of it : 

Seventy miles away in a spot where a busy 
street opens out into a paved plaza all manner 
of common, ordinary work-a-day persons are 
busied about their puny affairs. In addition 
to being common and ordinary these folks do 
not believe in the divine right of kings; truly 
a high crime and misdemeanour. Moreover, 
they persist in the heretical practice of repub- 
licanism; they believe actually that all men 
were born free and equal; that all men have 
the grace and the authority within them to 
choose their own rulers; that all men have the 
right to live their own lives free from foreign 
dictation and alien despotism. But at this 
particular moment they are not concerned in 
the least with politics or policies. Their simple 
day is starting. A woman in a sidewalk 

[232] 



THE DAY OF BIG BERTHA 



kiosk is ranging morning papers on her narrow 
shelf. A half-grown girl in a small booth set 
in the middle of the square where the tracks 
of the tramway end, is selling street car tickets 
to working men in blouses and baggy corduroy 
trousers. Hucksters and barrow-men have es- 
tablished a small market along the curbing of 
the pavement. A waiter is mopping the metal 
tops of a row of little round tables under the 
glass markee of a cafe. Wains and wagons 
are passing with a rumble of wheels. Here 
there is no drama except the simple homely 
drama of applied industry. 

Three minutes pass: Far away to the north, 
where the woods are quiet again and the 
birds have mustered up courage to sing once 
more, The Regal One drops his arm and looks 
about him at his officers, nodding and smiling. 
Smiling, they nod back in chorus, like well- 
trained automatons. There is a murmur of 
interchanged congratulations. The effort upon 
which so much invaluable time and so much 
scientific thought have been expended, stands 
unique and accomplished. Unless all calcu- 
lations have failed the nine-inch shell has 
reached its mark, has scored its bull's eye, has 
done its predestined job. 

It has; those calculations could not go 
wrong. Out of the kindly and smiling heavens, 
with no warning except the shriek of its clear- 
ing passage through the skies, the bolt descends 
in the busy square. The glass awning over the 
[ 233 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

cafe front becomes a darting rain of sharp-edged 
javelins; the paving stones rise and spread in 
hurtling fragments from a smoking crater in 
the roadway. There are a few minutes of mad 
frenzy among those people assembled there. 
Then a measure of quiet succeeds to the 
tumult. The work of rescue starts. The 
woman who vended papers is a crushed mass 
under the wreckage of her kiosk; the girl who 
sold car tickets is dead and mangled beneath 
her flattened booth; the waiter who wiped the 
table-tops off lies among his tables now, the 
whole crown of his head sliced away by slivers 
of glass; here and there in the square are scat- 
tered small motionless clumps that resemble 
heaps of bloodied and torn rags. Wounded 
men and women are being carried away, 
groaning and screaming as they go. But in 
the edge of the woods at St. Gobain the Kaiser 
is climbing into his car to ride to his head- 
quarters. It is his breakfast-time and past it 
and he has a fine appetite this morning. The 
picture is complete. The campaign for Kultur 
in the world has scored another triumph, the 
said score standing: Seven dead; fifteen in- 
jured. 



[ 234 ] 



CHAPTER XV 
WANTED: A FOOL-PROOF WAR 

THERE was a transportload of newly 
made officers coming over for service 
here in France. There was on board 
one gentleman in uniform who bore 
himself, as the saying goes, with an air. By 
reason of that air and by reason of a certain 
intangible atmospheric something about him 
difficult to define in words he seemed intent 
upon establishing himself upon a plane far re- 
mote from and inaccessible to these fellow 
voyagers of his who were crossing the sea to 
serve in the line, or to act as interpreters, or 
to go on staffs, or to work with the Red Cross 
or the Y. M. C. A. or the K. of C. or what not. 
He had what is called the superior manner, if 
you get what I mean — and you should get 
what I mean, reader, if ever you had lived, as 
I have, for a period of years hard by and ad- 
jacent to that particular stretch of the eastern 
seaboard of North America where, as nowhere 
else along the Atlantic Ocean or in the in- 
terior, are to be found in numbers those fa- 

[235 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

voured beings who acquire merit unutterable 
by belonging to, or by being distantly related 
to, or by being socially acquainted with, the 
families that have nothing but. 

Nevertheless, and to the contrary notwith- 
standing, divers of his brother travellers failed 
to keep their distance. Toward this distin- 
guished gentleman they deported themselves 
with a familiarity and an offhandedness that 
must have been acutely distasteful to one un- 
accustomed to moving in a mixed and miscella- 
neous company. 

Accordingly he took steps on the second day 
out to put them in their proper places. A 
list was being circulated to get up a subscrip- 
tion for something or other, and almost the 
very first person to whom this list came in its 
rounds of the first cabin was the person in 
question. He took out a gold-mounted foun- 
tain pen from his pocket and in a fair round hand 
inscribed himself thus: 

"Bejones of Tuxedo" 

There were no initials — royalty hath not 
need for initials — but just the family name and 
the name of the town so fortunate as to number 
among its residents this notable — which names 
for good reasons I have purposely changed. 
Otherwise the impressive incident occurred as 
here narrated. 

But those others just naturally refused to be 
either abashed or abated. They must have been 
[236] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

an irreverent, sacrilegious lot, by all accounts. 
The next man to whom the subscription was car- 
ried took note of the new fashion in signatures 
and then gravely wrote himself down as "Spirits 
of Niter"; and the next man called himself 
"Henri of Navarre"; and the third, it devel- 
oped, was no other than "Cream of Tartar"; 
and the next was "Timon of Athens"; and the 
next "Mother of Vinegar" — and so on and so 
forth, while waves of ribald and raucous laugh- 
ter shook the good ship from stem to stern. 

However, the derisive ones reckoned without 
their host. For them the superior mortal had 
a yet more formidable shot in the locker. On 
the following day he approached three of the 
least impressed of his temporary associates as 
they stood upon the promenade deck, and. 
apropos of nothing that was being said or done 
at the moment he, speaking in a clear voice, 
delivered himself of the following crushing re- 
mark: 

"When I was born there were only two 
houses in the city of New York that had porte- 
cocheres, ana I — I was born in one of them." 

Inconceivable though it may appear, the fact 
is to be recorded that even this disclosure 
failed to silence the tongues of ridicule aboard 
that packet boat. Rather did it enhance them, 
seeming but to spur the misguided vulgarians 
on and on to further evidences of disrespect. 
There are reasons for believing that Bejones of 
Tuxedo, who had been born in the drafty semi- 
[237] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

publicity of a porte-cochere, left the vessel 
upon its arrival with some passing sense of re- 
lief, though it should be stated that up until 
the moment of his debarkation he continued 
ever, while under the eye of the plebes and com- 
moners about him, to bear himself after a 
mode and a port befitting the station to which 
Nature had called him. He vanished into the 
hinterland of France and was gone to take up 
his duties ; but he left behind him, among those 
who had travelled hither in his company, a 
recollection which neither time nor vicissitude 
can efface. Presumably he is still in the serv- 
ice, unless it be that ere now the service has 
found out what was the matter with it. 

I have taken the little story concerning him 
as a text for this article, not because Bejones 
of Tuxedo is in any way typical of any group 
or subgroup of men in our new Army — indeed 
I am sure that he, like the blooming of the 
century plant, is a thing which happens only 
once in a hundred years, and not then unless all 
the conditions are salubrious. I have chosen 
the little tale to keynote my narrative for the 
reason that I believe it may serve in illustration 
of a situation that has arisen in Europe, and 
especially in France, these last few months — a 
condition that does not affect our Army so 
much as it affects sundry side issues connected 
more or less indirectly with the presence on 
European soil of an army from the United 
States. 

[238 ] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

Like most of the nations having representa- 
tive forms of government that have gone into 
this war, we went in as an amateur nation so 
far as knowledge of the actual business of mod- 
ern warfare was concerned. Like them, we 
have had to learn the same hard lessons that 
they learned, in the same hard school of experi- 
ence. Our national amateurishness beforehand 
was not altogether to our discredit; neither was 
it altogether to our credit. Nobody now denies 
that we should have been better prepared 
for eventualities than we were. On the other 
hand it was hardly to be expected that a peace- 
ful commercial country such as ours — which 
until lately had been politically remote as it 
was geographically aloof upon its own hemi- 
sphere from the political storm-centres of the 
Old World, and in which there was no taint of 
the militarism that has been Germany's curse, 
and will yet be her undoing — should in times 
of peace greatly concern itself with any save 
the broad general details of the game of war, 
except as a heart-moving spectacle enacted 
upon the stage of another continent and viewed 
by us with sympathetic and sorrowing eyes 
across three or four thousand miles of salt 
water. Prior to our advent into it the war 
had no great appeal upon the popular con- 
science of the United States. Out of the fulness 
of our hearts and out of the abundance of our 
prosperity we gave our dollars, and gave and 
gave and kept on giving them for the succour 

[239] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of the victims of the world catastrophe; but a 
sense of the impending peril for our own insti- 
tutions came home to but few among us. 
Here and there were individuals who scented 
the danger; but they were as prophets crying 
in the wilderness; the masses either could not 
or would not see it. They would not make 
ready against the evil days ahead. 

So we went into this most highly specialised 
industry, which war has become, as amateurs 
mainly. Our Navy was no amateur navy, as 
very speedily developed, and before this year's 
fighting is over our enemy is going to realise 
that our Army is not an amateur army. We 
may have been greenhorns at the trade wherein 
Germans were experts by training and educa- 
tion; still we fancy ourselves as a reasonably 
adaptable breed. But if the truth is to be 
told it must be confessed that in certain of the 
Allied branches of the business we are yet 
behaving like amateurs. After more than a 
year of actual and potential participation in 
the conflict we even now are doing things and 
suffering things to be done which would make 
us the laughingstock of our allies if they had 
time or temper for laughing. I am not speaking 
of the conduct of our operations in the field 
or in the camps or on the high seas. I am 
speaking with particular reference to what 
might be called some of the by-products. 

None of us is apt to forget, or cease to remem- 
ber with pride, the flood of patriotic sacrifice 

[240]i 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

that swept our country in the spring of 1917. 
No other self-governing people ever adopted a 
universal draft before their shores had been 
invaded and before any of their manhood had 
fallen in battle. No other self-governing people 
ever accepted the restrictions of a food-ration- 
ing scheme before any of the actual provisions 
concerning that food-rationing scheme had 
been embodied into the written laws. Other 
countries did it under compulsion, after their 
resources showed signs of exhaustion. We did 
it voluntarily; and it was all the more wonder- 
ful that we should have done it voluntarily 
when all about us was human provender in 
a prodigal fullness. There was plenty for our 
own tables. 

By self-imposed regulations we cut down our 
supplies so that our allies might be fed with 
the surplus thus made available. Outside of 
a few sorry creatures there was scarcely to be 
found in America an individual, great or small, 
who did not give, and give freely, of the work of 
his or her heart and hands to this or that 
phase of the mighty undertaking upon which 
our Government had embarked and to which 
our President, speaking for us all, had solemnly 
dedicated all that we were or had been or ever 
should be. 

All sorts of commissions, some useful and 

important beyond telling, some unutterably 

unuseful and incredibly unimportant, sprang 

into being. And to and fro in the land, in 

[241 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

numbers amounting to a vast multitude, went 
the woman who wanted to do her part, with- 
out having the least idea of what that part 
would be or how she would go about doing it. 
She knew nothing of nursing; kitchen work, a 
vulgar thing, was abhorrent to her nature and 
to her manicured nails; she could not cook, 
neither could she sew or sweep — but she must 
do her part. 

She was not satisfied to stay on at home 
and by hard endeavour to fit herself for help- 
ing in the task confronting every rational 
and willing being between the two oceans. 
No, sir-ree, that would be too prosaic, too 
commonplace an employment for her. Be- 
sides, the working classes could attend to that 
job. She must do her part abroad — either in 
France within sound of the guns or in racked 
and desolated Belgium. Of course her inten- 
tions were good. The intentions of such per- 
sons are nearly always good, because they 
change them before they have a chance to go 
stale. 

I think the average woman of this type 
had a mental conception of herself wearing a 
wimple and a coif of purest white, in a frock 
that was all crisp blue linen and big pearl 
buttons, with one red cross blazing upon her 
sleeve and another on her cap, sitting at the 
side of a spotless bed in a model hospital that 
was fragrant with flowers, and ministering 
daintily to a splendid wounded hero with the 

[242 ] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

face of a demigod and the figure of a model for 
an underwear ad. Preferably this youth would 
be a gallant aviator, and his wound would be 
in the head so that from time to time she might 
adjust the spotless bandage about his brow. 

I used to wish sometimes when I met such 
a lady that I might have drawn for her the 
picture of reality as I had seen it more times 
than once — tired, earnest, competent women 
who slept, what sleep they got, in lousy billets 
that were barren of the simplest comforts, 
sleeping with gas masks under their pillows, and 
who for ten or twelve or fifteen or eighteen 
hours on a stretch performed the most nau- 
seating and the most necessary offices for poor 
suffering befouled men lying on blankets upon 
straw pallets in wrecked dirty houses or in 
half-ruined stables from which the dung had 
hurriedly been shoveled out in order to make 
room for suffering soldiers — stables that reeked 
with the smells of carbolic and iodoform and 
with much worse smells. It is an extreme 
case that I am describing, but then the picture 
is a true picture, whereas the idealistic fancy 
painted by the lady who just must do her 
part at the Front had no existence except in 
the movies or in her own imagination. 

It never occurred to her that there would 
be slop jars to be emptied or filthy bodies, alive 
with crawling vermin, to be cleansed. It never 
occurred to her that she would take up room 
aboard ship that might better be filled with 
[243] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

horse collars or hardtack or insect powder; nor 
that while over here she would consume food 
that otherwise would stay the stomach of a 
fighting man or a working woman; nor that 
if ever she reached the battle zone she would 
encounter living conditions appallingly bare 
and primitive beyond anything she could con- 
ceive; nor that she could not care for herself, 
and was fitted neither by training nor instinct 
to help care for any one else. 

When I left America last winter a great 
flow of national sanity had already begun to 
rise above the remaining scourings of national 
hysteria; and the lady whose portrait I have 
tried in the foregoing paragraphs to sketch 
was not quite so numerous or so vociferous 
as she had been in those first few exalted 
weeks and months following our entrance into 
the war as a full partner in the greatest of 
enterprises. My surprise was all the greater 
therefore to find that she had beaten me across 
the water. She had pretty well disappeared 
at home. 

One typical example of this strange species 
crossed in the same ship with me. Heaven 
alone knows what political or social influence 
had availed to secure her passport for her. 
But she had it, and with it credentials from an 
organisation that should have known better. 
She was a woman of independent wealth 
seemingly, and her motives undoubtedly were 
of the best; but as somebody might have 
[ 244 ] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

said: Good motives butter no parsnips, and 
hell is paved with buttered parsnips. Her 
notion was to drive a car at the Front — an 
ambulance or a motor truck or a general's 
automobile or something. She had owned 
cars, but she had never driven one, as she 
confessed; but that was a mere detail. She 
would learn how, some day after she got to 
Europe, and then somebody or other would 
provide her with a car and she would start 
driving it; such was her intention. Unaided 
she could no more have wrested a busted tire 
off of a rusted rim than she could have mar- 
celled her own back hair; and so far as her 
knowledge of practical mechanics went, I am 
sure no reasonably prudent person would have 
trusted her with a nutpick; but she had the 
serene confidence of an inspired and magnificent 
ignorance. 

She had her uniform too. She had brought 
it with her and she wore it constantly. She 
said she designed it herself, but I think she 
fibbed there. No one but a Fifth Avenue 
mantuamaker of the sex which used to be the 
gentler sex before it got the vote could have 
thought up a vestment so ornate, so swagger 
and so complicated. 

It was replete with shoulder straps and 
abounding in pleats and gores and gussets 
and things. Just one touch was needed to 
make it a finished confection: By rights it 
should have buttoned up the back. 

[ 245 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

The woman who had the cabin next to hers 
in confidence told a group of us that she had 
it from the stewardess that it took the lady a 
full hour each day to get herself properly 
harnessed into her caparisons. Still I must 
say the effect, visually speaking, was worthy 
of the effort; and besides, the woman who 
told us may have been exaggerating. She was 
a registered and qualified nurse who knew her 
trade and wore matter-of-fact garments and 
flat-heeled, broad-soled shoes. She was not 
very exciting to look at, but she radiated 
eflSciency. She knew exactly what she would do 
when she got over here and exactly how she 
would do it. We agreed among ourselves that 
if we were in quest of the ornamental we 
would search out the lady who meant to drive 
the car — provided there was any car; but that 
if anything serious ailed any of us we would 
rather have the services of one of the plain 
nursing sisterhood than a whole skating-rinkful 
of the other kind round. 

In the latter part of 1917 there landed in 
France a young woman hailing from a Far 
Western city whose family is well known on 
the Pacific Slope. She brought with her letters 
of introduction signed by imposing names and 
a comfortable sum of money, which had been 
subscribed partly out of her own pocket and 
partly out of the pockets of well-meaning 
persons in her home state whom she had suc- 
ceeded in interesting in her particular scheme 

[246] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

of wartime endeavour. She was very fair to 
see and her uniform, by all accounts, was very 
sweet to look upon, it being a horizon-blue in 
colour with much braiding upon the sleeves 
and collar. It has been my observation since 
coming over that when in doubt regarding 
their vocations and their intentions these 
unattached lady zealots go in very strongly 
for striking effects in the matter of habili- 
ments. Along the boulevards and in the tea- 
rooms I have encountered a considerable num- 
ber who appeared to have nothing to do except 
to wear their uniforms. 

However, this young person had no doubt 
whatever concerning her motives and her 
purposes. The whole thing was all mapped out 
in her head, as developed when she called upon 
a high official of our Expeditionary Forces at 
his headquarters in the southern part of France. 
She told him she had come hither for the express 
purpose of feeding our starving aviators. He 
might have told her that so long as there con- 
tinued to be served fried potato chips free 
at the Crillon bar there was but little danger 
of any airman going hungry, in Paris at least. 
What he did tell her when he had rallied some- 
what from the shock was that he saw no way 
to gratify her in her benevolent desire unless 
he could catch a few aviators and lock them up 
and starve them for two or three days, and he 
rather feared the young men might object to 
such treatment. As a matter of fact, I under- 

[247] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

stand he so forgot himself as to laugh at the 
young woman. 

At any rate his attitude was so unsym- 
pathetic that he practically spoiled the whole 
war for her, and she gave him a piece of her 
mind and went away. She had departed out 
of the country before I arrived in it, and I 
learned of her and her uniform and her mission 
and her disappointment at its unfulfillment by 
hearsay only; but I have no doubt, in view of 
some of the things I have myself seen, that the 
account which reached me was substantially 
correct. Along this line I am now prepared to 
believe almost anything. 

Here, on the other hand, is a case of which I 
have direct and first-hand knowledge. I en- 
countered a group of young women attached 
to one of the larger American organisations 
engaged in systematised charities and mercies 
on this side of the water. Now, plainly these 
young women were inspired by the very highest 
ideals; that there was no discounting. They 
were full of the spirit of service and sacrifice. 
Mainly they were college graduates. Without 
exception they were well bred; almost without 
exception they were well educated. 

The particular tasks for which they had 
been detailed were to care for pauperised 
repatriates returning to France through Switzer- 
land from areas of their country occupied by 
the enemy, and to aid these poor folks in re- 
establishing their home life and to give them 
[ 248 ] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

lessons in domestic science. To the success of 
their ministrations there was just one draw- 
back: They were dealing with peasants mostly 
— furtive, shy, secretive folks who under ordi- 
nary circumstances would be bitterly resentful of 
any outside interference by aliens with their 
mode of life, and who in these cases had been 
rendered doubly suspicious by reason of the 
misfortunes they had endured while under 
the thumb of the Germans. 

To understand them, to plumb diplomatically 
the underlying reasons for their prejudices, to 
get upon a basis of helpful sympathy with 
them, it was highly essential that those dealing 
with them not only should have infinite tact and 
finesse but should be able to fathom the mean- 
ing of a nod or a gesture, a sidelong glance of the 
eyes or the inflection of a muttered word. 
And yet of those zealous young women who 
had been assigned to this delicate task there 
was scarcely one in six who spoke any French 
at all. It inevitably followed that the bulk 
of their patient labours should go for naught; 
moreover, while they continued in this employ- 
ment they were merely occupying space in an 
already crowded country and consuming food 
in an already needy country; the both of which 
— space and food — were needed for people who 
could accomplish effective things. 

An American woman who is reputed to be a 
dietetic specialist came over not long ago, 
backed by funds donated in the States. Her 
[249] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

instructions were to establish cafeterias at some 
of the larger French munition works. Probably 
her chagrin was equalled only by her astonish- 
ment when she learned that for reasons which 
seemed to it good and sufficient — and which no 
doubt were — the French Government did not 
want any American-plan cafeterias established 
at any of its munition works. Apparently it 
had not seemed feasible and proper to the spon- 
sors of the diet specialist to find out before 
dispatching her overseas whether the plan 
would be agreeable to the authorities here; or 
whether there already were eating places suit- 
able to the desires of the working people at 
these munition plants; or how long it would 
take, given the most favourable conditions, 
to cure the workers of their tenacious instinct 
for eating the kind of midday meal they have 
been eating for some hundreds of years and 
accustom them and their palates and their 
stomachs to the Yankee quick lunch with its 
baked pork and beans, its buckwheat cakes 
with maple sirup and its four kinds of pie. In 
their zeal the promoters, it would seem, had 
entirely overlooked those essential details. It is 
just such omissions as this one that the fine 
frenzy of helping out in wartime appears to 
develop in a nation that is given to boasting 
of its business efficiency and that vaunts itself 
that it knows how to give generously without I 
wasting foolishly. 

The field manager of an organisation that 
[ 250 ]! 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

is doing a great deal for the comfort of our 
soldiers and the soldiers of our allies told 
me of one of his experiences. He had a sense 
of humour and he could laugh over it, but I 
think I noted a suggestion of resentment behind 
the laughter. He said that some months before 
he set up and assumed charge of a plant well 
up toward the trenches in a sector that had 
been taken over by the American troops. It 
was a large and elaborate concern, as these 
concerns are rated in the field. The men 
were pleased with its accommodations and 
facilities, and the field manager was proud of it. 

One day there appeared a businesslike young 
woman who introduced herself as belonging to 
a kindred organisation that was charged with 
the work of decorating the interiors of such 
establishments as the one over which he pre- 
sided. Somewhat puzzled, he showed her, 
first of all, his canteen. It was as most such 
places are: There were boxes of edibles upon 
counters, in open boxes, so that the soldier 
customers might appraise the wares before 
investing; upon the shelves there were soft 
drinks and smoking materials and all manner 
of small articles of wearing apparel; likewise 
baseballs and safety razors and soap, toilet 
kits and the rest of it. Altogether the manager 
and his two assistants were rather pleased with 
the arrangement. 

The newly arrived young woman swept the 
scene with a cold professional eye. 

[251] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

"On the whole this will do fairly well," she 
said with a certain briskness in her tone. 
"Yes, I may say it will do very well indeed — 
with certain changes, certain touches." 

"As for example, what, please.'*" inquired 
the superintendent. 

"Well," she said, "for one thing we must 
put up some bright curtains at the windows; 
and to lighten up the background I think we'll 
run a stenciled pattern in some cheerful colour 
round the walls at the top. " 

It was not for the manager to inquire how 
the decorator meant to get her curtains and 
her stencils and her wall paints up over a 
road that was being alternately gassed and 
shelled at nights and on which the traffic 
capacity was already taxed to the utmost by 
the business of bringing up supplies, munitions 
and rations from the base some fifteen miles in 
the rear. He merely bowed and awaited the 
lady's further commands. "And now," she 
said, "where is the rest room?" 

"The rest room, did you say?" 

"Certainly, the rest room — the recreation 
hall, the place where these poor men may go 
for privacy and innocent amusement?" 

"Well, you see, thus close up near the Front 
we haven't been able to make provision for "a 
regular rest room," explained the manager. 
"Besides, in case of a withdrawal or an attack 
we might have to pull out in a hurry and leave 
behind everything that is not readily portable 
[252] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

on wagons or trucks. The nearest approach 
that we have to a rest room is here at the rear. " 

He led the way to a room at the back. It 
contained such plenishings as one generally 
finds in improvised quarters in the field — that 
is to say, it contained a curious equipment 
made up partly of crude bits of furniture col- 
lected on the spot out of villagers' abandoned 
homes and partly of makeshift stools and tables 
coopered together from barrels and boxes and 
stray bits of planking. Also it contained at this 
time as many soldiers as could crowd into it. 
A phonograph was grinding out popular airs, 
and divers games of checkers and cards were in 
progress, each with its fringe of interested 
onlookers ringing in the players. 

"Oh, but this will never do — never!" stated 
the inspecting lady. "It is too bare, too cheer- 
less! It lacks atmosphere. It lacks coziness; 
it lacks any appeal to the senses — in short it 
lacks everything! We must have some imme- 
diate improvements here by all means." 

The man was beginning to lose his temper. 
By an effort he retained it. 

"The men seem fairly well satisfied; at least 
I have heard no complaint," he said. "What 
would you suggest in the way of changes?" 

As she answered, the visitor ticked off the 
items of her mental inventory of essentials on 
her fingers. 

"Well, to begin with we must clear all this 
litter out of here," she said. "Then we must 

[253] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

install some really comfortable chairs and at 
least two or three roomy sofas and some simple 
couches where the men may lie down. I should 
also like to see a piano here. That, with the 
addition of some curtains at the windows and 
some simple treatment of the walls and a few 
appropriate pictures properly spaced and prop- 
erly hung, will be different, I think. " 

"Yes," demurred the manager, "but ad- 
mitting that we could get the things you 
have enumerated up here, another problem 
would arise: This room, which, as you see, is 
not large, would be so crowded with the furnish- 
ings that there would be room in it for very 
many less men than usually come here. There 
are probably fifty men in it now. If it were 
filled up with sofas and couches and a piano 
I doubt whether we could crowd twenty men 
inside of it." 

"Very well, then," stated the lady deco- 
rator calmly, "you must admit only twenty 
men at a time. " 

"Quite so; but how," he demanded — "how 
am I going to select the twenty?" 

The young woman considered the question 
for a moment. Then a solution came to her. 

"I should select the twenty neatest ones," 
she said. 

Whereupon the manager excused himself and 
went out to frame a dispatch to headquarters 
embodying an ultimatum, which ultimatum was 
that the lady decorator went away from there 

[254] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

forthwith or his resignatioji must take effect, 
coincident with his immediate departure from 
his present post. The home oflBce must have 
called the lady off, because when I saw him he 
was still in harness, and swinging a man-size 
job in a competent way. 

I would not have the reader believe that I am 
casting discredit upon either the patriotic im- 
pulses or the honest motives of the bulk of the 
lay workers who have journeyed to Europe, 
paying their own way and their own living 
expenses. Often they arrive, many of them, to 
strike hands with the military authorities in the 
task which faces our nation on Continental soil. 
There is room and a welcome in France, in 
Italy, in England and in Flanders for every 
civilian recruit who really knows how to do 
something helpful and who has the strength, 
the self-reliance and the hardihood to perform 
that particular function under difficult and com- 
plicated conditions, which nearly always are 
physically uncomfortable and which may be- 
come physically dangerous. 

Nor would I wish any one to assume that I am 
deprecating by inference or by frontal attack 
the very fine things that are being accomplished 
every day by fine American women and girls 
who answered the first call for trained helpers, 
to serve in hospitals or canteens or huts, in 
settlement work or at telephone exchanges. It 
will make any American thrill with pride to 
enter a ward where the American Red Cross is 
^[255] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

in charge, or where a medical unit from one of 
the great hospitals or one of our great univer- 
sities back home has control. The French and 
the British are quick enough to speak in terms 
of highest praise of the achievements of Ameri- 
can surgeons, American nurses and American 
ambulance drivers. They say, and with good 
reason for saying it, that our people have pluck 
and that they have skill and that they above 
all are amazingly resourceful. 

Personally I know of no smarter exhibition 
of native wit and courage that the war has 
produced than was shown by that group of 
Smith College girls who had been organising 
and directing colonisation work among the peas- 
ants in the reclaimed districts of Northern 
France and who were driven out by the great 
spring advance of the Germans. I met some 
of those young women. They were modest 
enough in describing their adventure. It was 
by gathering a shred of a story there and a scrap 
of an anecdote here that I was able to piece to- 
gether a fairly accurate estimate of the self- 
imposed discipline, the clean-strained grit and 
the initiative which marked their conduct 
through three trying weeks. 

Perhaps it was a mistake in their instance, as 
in the instances of divers similar organisations, 
that the work of resettling the wasted lands 
above the Aisne and the Oise should have been 
undertaken at points that would be menaced 
in the event of a quick onslaught by the Prussian 
[256] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

high command. The British, I understand, 
privately objected to the undertakings on the 
ground that the presence of American women 
in villages which might fall again into the foe's 
hands — and which as it turned out did fall 
again into his hands — entailed an added burden 
and an added responsibility upon the fighting 
forces. The British were right. Practically all 
of the repatriated peasants had to flee for the 
second time, abandoning their rebuilt homes 
and their newly sowed fields. 

On the heels of these, improvements which 
represented many thousands of American dollars 
and many months of painstaking labour on the 
part of devoted American women went up in 
flames. The torch was applied rather than that 
the little model houses and tlie tons of donated 
supplies on hand should go into hostile hands. 

Those Smith College girls did not run away, 
though, until the Germans were almost upon 
them. Up to the very last minute they stayed 
at their posts, feeding and housing not only 
refugees but many exhariE'ted soldiers, British 
and French, who staggered in, spent and sped 
after alternately fighting and retreating through 
a period of days and nights. When finally tiiey 
did come away each one of them came driving 
her own truck and bearing in it a load of worn- 
out and helpless natives. One girl brought out 
a troop of frightened dwarfs from a stranded 
travelling caravan. Another ministered day and 
night to a blind woman nearly ninety years old 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

and a family of orphaned babies. The passen- 
gers of a third were four inmates of a little com- 
munal blind asylum that happened to be in 
the invader's path. 

On the way, in addition to tending their 
special charges, they cooked and served hun- 
dreds of meals for hungry soldiers and hungry 
civilians. They spent the nights in towns 
under shell fire, and when at length the German 
drive had been checked they assembled their 
forces in Beauvais. Thus and with charac- 
teristic adaptability some became drivers of 
ambulances and supply trucks plying along the 
lines of communication, and some opened a 
kitchen for the benefit of passing soldiers at 
the local railway station. If the faculty and 
the students and the alumnae of Smith College 
did not hold a celebration when the true story 
of what happened in March and April reached 
them they were lacking in appreciation — that's 
all I have to say about it. 

Right here seems a good-enough place for me 
to slip in a few words of approbation for the work 
which another 'organisation has accomplished 
in France since we put our men into the field. 
Nobody asked me to speak in its favour because 
so far as I can find out it has no publicity de- 
partment. I am referring to the Salvation Army 
— may it live forever for the service which, with- 
out price and without any boasting on the part 
of its personnel, it is rendering to our boys in 
France! 

[258] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

A good many of us who hadn't enough 
religion, and a good many more of us who may- 
hap had too much rehgion, look rather contemp- 
tuously upon the methods of the Salvationists. 
Some have gone so far as to intimate that the 
Salvation Army was vulgar in its methods and 
lacking in dignity and even in reverence. Some 
have intimated that converting a sinner to the 
tap of a bass drum or the tinkle of a tambourine 
was an improper process altogether. Never 
again, though, shall I hear the blare of the 
cornet as it cuts into the chorus of hallelujah 
whoops where a ring of blue-bonneted women 
and blue-capped men stand exhorting on a 
city street corner under the gas lights, without 
recalling what some of their enrolled brethren — 
and sisters — have done and are doing in Europe. 

The American Salvation Army in France is 
small, but, believe me, it is powerfully busy! 
Its war delegation came over without any fan- 
fare of the trumpets of publicity. It has no 
paid press agents here and no impressive head- 
quarters. There are no well-known names, 
other than the names of its executive heads, on 
its rosters or on its advisory boards. None of 
its members is housed at an expensive hotel 
and none of them has handsome automobiles 
in which to travel about from place to place. 
No compaigns to raise nation-wide millions of 
dollars for the cost of its ministrations overseas 
were ever held at home. I imagine it is the 
pennies of the poor that mainly fill its war chest. 
[259] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

I imagine, too, that sometimes its finances are 
an uncertain quantity. Incidentally I am as- 
sured that not one of its male workers here is 
of draft age unless he holds exemption papers 
to prove his physical unfitness for military ser- 
vice. The Salvationists are taking care to 
purge themselves of any suspicion that poten- 
tial slackers have joined their ranks in order to 
avoid the possibility of having to perform duties 
in khaki. 

Among oflScers as well as among enlisted men 
one occasionally hears criticism — which may or 
may not be based on a fair judgment — for 
certain branches of certain activities of certain 
organisations. But I have yet to meet any 
soldier, whether a brigadier or a private, 
who, if he spoke at all of the Salvation 
Army, did not speak in terms of fervent 
gratitude for the aid that the Salvationists 
are rendering so unostentatiously and yet so 
very effectively. Let a sizable body of troops 
move from one station to another, and hard on 
its heels there came a squad of men and women 
of the Salvation Army. An army truck may 
bring them, or it may be they have a battered 
jitney to move them and their scanty outfits. 
Usually they do not ask for help from any one 
in reaching their destinations. They find lodg- 
ment in a wrecked shell of a house or in the 
corner of a barn. By main force and awkward- 
ness they set up their equipment, and very 
soon the word has spread among the troopers 
[260] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

that at such-and-such a place the Salvation 
Army is serving free hot drinks and free dough- 
nuts and free pies. It specialises in doughnuts, 
the Salvation Army in the field does — the real 
old-fashioned homemade ones that taste of 
home to a homesick soldier boy. 

I did not see this, but one of my associates 
did. He saw it last winter in a dismal place 
on the Toul sector. A file of our troops were 
finishing a long hike through rain and snow 
over roads knee-deep in half-thawed icy slush. 
Cold and wet and miserable, they came tramp- 
ing into a cheerless, half-empty town within 
sound and range of the German guns. They 
found a reception committee awaiting them 
there — in the person of two Salvation Army 
lassies and a Salvation Army captain. The 
women had a fire going in the dilapidated oven 
of a vanished villager's kitchen. One of them 
was rolling out the batter on a plank with an 
old wine bottle for a rolling pin and using the 
top of a tin can to cut the dough into circular 
strips. The other woman was cooking the 
doughnuts, and as fast as they were cooked the 
man served them out, spitting hot, to hungry 
wet boys clamouring about the door, and nobody 
was asked to pay a cent. 

At the risk of giving mortal affront to ultra- 
doctrinal practitioners of applied theology I 
am firmly committed to the belief that by the 
grace of God and the grease of doughnuts 
those three humble benefactors that day 
[261 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

strengthened their right to a place in the 
Heavenly Kingdom. 

As I said a bit ago, there is in France room 
and to spare and the heartiest sort of wel- 
come for competent, sincere lay workers, both 
men and women. But there is no room, 
and if truth be known, there is no welcome for 
any other sort. These people over here long 
ago passed out of the experimental period in 
the handling of industrial and special problems 
that have grown up out of war. They have 
entirely emerged from the amateur stage of 
endeavour and direction. If any man doubts 
the truth of this he has only to see, as I have 
seen, the thousands of women who have taken 
men's jobs in the cities in order that the men 
might go to the colours; has only to see the 
overalled women in the big munition plants; 
has only to see how the peasant women of 
France are labouring in the fields and how the 
girls of the British auxiliary legions — the mem- 
bers of the W. A. A. C. for a conspicuous 
example — are carrying their share of the burden; 
has only to see women of high degree and low, 
each doing her part sanely, systematically and 
unflinchingly — to appreciate that, though Brit- 
ain and France can find employment for 
every pair of willing and abl^ hands some- 
where behind the lines, they have no use 
whatsoever for the unorganised applicant or for 
the purely ornamental variety of volunteer or 
yet for the mere notoriety seeker. 
[262] 



wanted: a fool-proof war 

I make so bold as to suggest that it is time 
we were taking the same lesson to heart; 
time to start the sifting process ourselves. I 
have seen in Paris a considerable number of 
American women who appeared to have no 
business here except to air their most becoming 
uniforms in public places and to tell in a vague 
broad way of the things they hope to do. The 
French, proverbially, are a polite race, and 
the French Government will endure a great 
deal of this kind of infliction rather than run 
the risk of engendering friction, even to the 
most minute extent, with the people or the 
administration of an Allied nation. But in 
wartime especially, too much patience becomes a 
dubious virtue, and if practiced for overlong 
may become a fault. 

As yet there has been no intimation from any 
ofl&cial source that the French would rather our 
State Department did not issue quite so many 
passports to Americans who have no set and 
definite purpose in making the journey to 
these shores, but even a superficial knowledge 
of the French language and the most casual 
acquaintance with the French nature enable 
one to get at what the French people are think- 
ing. I am sure that had the prevalent con- 
dition been reversed our papers would have 
voiced the popular protest at the imposi- 
tion long before now. Some of these days, 
unless we apply the preventive measures on 
our own side of the Atlantic, the perfectly 
[263] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

justifiable resentment of the hard-pressed 
French is going to find utterance; and then 
quite a number of well-intentioned but utterly 
inutile persons will be going back home with 
their feelings all harrowed up. 



[ 264 ] 



CHAPTER XVI 
CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

PLEASE do not think that because I have 
mainly dwelt thus far upon the women 
offenders that there are no American 
men in France who do not belong here, 
because that would be a wrong assumption. I 
merely have mentioned the women first because 
by reason of their military garbing — or what 
some of them fondly mistake for military 
garbing — they offer rather more conspicuous 
showing to the casual eye than the male civilian 
dress. 

The men are abundantly on hand though; 
make no mistake about that! Some of them 
come burdened with frock-coated dignity as 
members of special commissions or special 
delegations; in certain quarters there appears 
to be a somewhat hazy but very lively inclina- 
tion to try to run our share of this war by 
commission. Some, I am sure, came for the 
same reason that the young man in the limerick 
went to the stranger's funeral — because they 
are fond of a ride. Some I think came in the 

[265] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

hope of enjoying an exciting sort of junketing 
expedition, and some because they were all 
dressed up and had nowhere to go. 

As well as may be judged by one who has 
been away from home for going on five months 
now, the special-commission notion is being 
rather overdone. Individuals and groups of 
individuals bearing credentials from this fra- 
ternal organisation or that religious organisa- 
tion or the other research society reach England 
on nearly every steamer that penetrates through 
the U-boat zone. Almost invariably these 
gentlemen carry letters of introduction testi- 
fying to their personal probity and their col- 
lective importance, which letters are signed by 
persons sitting in high places. 

It may be that the English are thereby 
deceived into believing that the visitors are 
entitled to special consideration — as indeed 
some of them are, and indeed some of 
them most distinctly are not. Or then 
again it may be that the English are not 
aware of a device very common among our 
men of affairs for getting rid of a bore who is 
intent on going somewhere to see somebody 
and craves to be properly vouched for upon 
his arrival. In certain circles this habit is called 
passing the buck. In others it is known as 
writing letters of introduction. 

At any rate the English take no chances on 
offending the right party, even at the risk of 
favouring the wrong one. When a half dozen 
1266] 



CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

Yankees appear at the Foreign Office laden with 
letters addressed "To Whom it May Concern'* 
the Foreign Office immediately becomes con- 
cerned. 

How is a guileless Britisher intrenched 
behind a flat-top desk to know that the August 
and Imperial Order of Supreme Potentates 
whose chosen emissaries are now present desirous 
of having a look at the war, and afterward to 
approve of it in a report to the Grand Lodge at 
its next annual convention, if so be they do see 
fit to approve of it — how, I repeat, is he to know 
that the August and Imperial Order of Supreme 
Potentates has a membership largely composed 
of class-C bartenders? Not knowing, he acts 
in accordance with the best dictates of his 
ignorance. 

The commission or the delegation or the 
presentation, whatever it calls itself, is pro- 
vided with White Passes all round. On the 
strength of these White Passes the investi- 
gators are at the public expense transferred 
across the Channel and housed temporarily at 
the American Visitors' Chateau. From there 
they are taken in automobiles and under 
escort of very bored officers on a kind of glori- 
fied Cook's tour behind the British Front. 
Thereafter they are turned over to the French 
Mission or to the American forces for similar 
treatment. 

As a result they accumulate an assortment of 
soft-boiled and yolkless impressions which they 
[267] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

incubate into the spoken or the written word 
on the way back home, after they have held a 
meeting to decide whether they like the way the 
war is going on or whether they do not like 
the way the war is going on. Always there is 
the possibility that as a result of the dissemina- 
tion of underdone and undigested misinforma- 
tions which they have managed to acquire these 
persons, though actuated by the best intentions 
in the world, may do considerable harm in 
shaping public opinion in America. And like- 
wise one may be very sure a lot of pestered 
British and French functionaries are left to 
wonder what sort of folks the masses of Ameri- 
can citizenship must be if these are typical 
samples of the thought-moulding class. 

I am not exaggerating much when I touch on 
this particular phase of the topic now engaging 
me, for I have seen two delegations in Europe 
of the variety I have sought briefly to describe 
in the lines immediately foregoing; and we are 
expecting more in on the next boat. There was 
no imaginable reason why those whom I saw 
should be in a country that is at war at such a 
time of crisis as this time is, but the main point 
was that they were here, eating three large 
rectangular meals a day apiece and taking up 
the valuable time of overworked military men 
who accompanied them while they week-ended 
at the war. How many more such delegations 
will sift through the State Department and 
seep by the passport bureau and journey 
[ 268 ] 



CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

hither during the latter half of 1918 unless 
the Administration at Washington shuts down 
on the game no man can with accuracy calculate. 

Away down in the south of France I ran 
into a gentleman of a clerical aspect who lost 
no time in telling me about himself. He was 
tall and slender like a wand, and of a willowy 
suppleness of figure, and he was terribly serious 
touching on his mission. He represented a 
religious denomination that has several hun- 
dreds of thousands of communicants in the 
United States. He had been dispatched acros'^, 
he said, by the governing body of his church. 
His purpose, he explained, was to inquire into 
the bodily and spiritual well-being of his 
coreligionists who were on foreign service in 
the Army and the Navy, with a view subse- 
quently to suggesting reforms for any existing 
evil in the military and naval systems when he 
reported back to the main board of his church. 

To an innocent bystander it appeared that 
this particular investigator had a considerable 
contract upon his hands. Scattered over land 
and sea on this hemisphere there must be a 
good many thousands of members of his faith 
who are wearing the khaki or the marine blue. 
It would be practically impossible, I figured, to 
recognise them in their uniforms for what, 
denominationally speaking, they were; and 
from what I had seen of our operations I 
doubted whether any commanding oflScer would 
be willing to suspend routine while the reverend 
[ 269 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

tabulator went down the lines taking his census; 
besides, the latter process would invariably 
consume considerable time. I calculated off- 
hand that if the war lasted three years longer it 
still would be over before he could complete 
his rounds of all the camps and all the ships 
and all the rest billets and bases and hospitals 
and lines of communication, and so on. So I 
ventured to ask him just how he meant to go 
about getting his compilations of testimony 
together. 

He told me blandly that as yet he had not 
fully worked out that detail of the task. For 
the time being he would content himself with a 
general survey of the situation and with securing 
material for a lecture which he thought of 
giving upon his return to America. 

I felt a strong inclination to speak to him 
after some such fashion as this: 

"My dear sir, if I were you I would not 
greatly concern myself regarding the physical 
and the moral states ^of individuals composing 
our Expeditionary Forces. That job is already 
being competently attended to by experts. 
So far as my own observations go the chaplains 
are all conscientious, hard-working men. There 
are a large number of excellent and experienced 
chaplains over here — enough, in fact, to go 
round. They are doing everything that is 
humanly possible to be done to keep the men 
happy and amused in their leisure hours and to 
help them to continue to be decent, clean- 
[ 270 ] 



CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

minded, normal human beings. Almost with- 
out exception, to the best of my knowledge and 
belief, the officers are practically lending their 
personal influence and using the power and the 
weight of discipline to accomplish the same 
desirable ends. 

"On the physical side our boys are in splendid 
condition. We may have bogged slightly down 
in some of the aspects of this undertaking, but 
there is plenty of healthful and nourishing food 
on hand for every American boy in foreign 
service. He is comfortably clothed and com- 
fortably shod — his officers see to that; and he is 
housed in as comfortable a billet as it is possible 
to provide, the state of the country being what 
it is. While he is well and hearty he has his 
fill of victuals three times a day, and if he falls 
ill, is wounded or hurt he has as good medical 
attendance and as good nursing and as good 
hospital treatment as it is possible for our 
country to provide. 

"Touching on the other side of the proposition 
I would say this: In England, where there are 
powerfully few dry areas, and here in France, 
which is a country where everybody drinks 
wine, I have seen a great many thousands of 
our enlisted men — soldiers, sailors and marines, 
engineers and members of battalions. I have 
seen them in ail sorts of surroundings and under 
all sorts of circumstances. I have seen perhaps 
twenty who were slightly under the influence of 
alcohoUc stimulant. As a sinner would put it, 
[271] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

they were slightly jingled — ^not disorderly, not 
staggering, you understand, but somewhat 
jingled. I have yet to see one in such a state 
as the strictest police-court magistrate would 
call a state of outright intoxication. That has 
been my experience. I may add that it has 
been the common experience of the men of my 
profession who have had similar opportunities 
for observing the conduct of our fellows 

"It is true that the boys indulge in a good 
deal of miscellaneous cussing — which is deplor- 
able, of course, and highly reprehensible. Still, 
in my humble opinion most of them use pro- 
fanity as a matter of habit and not because 
there is any real lewdness or any real viciousness 
in their hearts. Mainly they cuss for the same 
reason that a parrot does. Anyhow, I could 
hardly blame a fellow sufferer for swearing 
occasionally, considering the kind of spring 
weather we have been having in these parts 
lately. 

"As for their morals, I am firmly committed 
to the belief, as a result of what I have seen 
and heard, that man for man our soldiers have 
a higher moral standard than the men of any 
army of any other nation engaged in this war; 
and when in this connection I speak of our 
soldiers I mean the soldiers of Canada as well 
as the soldiers of the United States. Any man 
who tells you the contrary is a liar, and the 
truth is not in him. This is not an offhand 
alibi; statistics compiled by our own surgeons 
1 272 ] 



CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

form the truth of it; and any man who stands 
up anywhere on our continent and says that 
the soldiers who have come from our side of the 
Atlantic to help lick Germany are contracting 
habits of drunkenness or that they are being 
ruined by the spreading of sexual diseases among 
them utters a deliberate and a cruel slander 
against North American manhood which should 
entitle him to a suit of tar-and-feather under- 
wear and a free ride on a rail out of any 
community. 

"There is absolutely nothing the matter 
with our boys except that they are average 
human beings, and it is going to take a long 
time to cure them of that. And please remem- 
ber this — that, discipline being what it is and 
military restraint being what it is, it is very 
much harder for a man in the Army or the Navy 
to get drunk or to misconduct himself than it 
would be for him to indulge in such excesses 
were he out in civil life, as a free agent. " 

That in fact was what I wanted to pour into 
the ear of the ecclesiastical prober. But I did 
not. I saved it up to say it here, where it 
would enjoy a wider circulation. I left him 
engaged in generally surveying. 

Oflficers and men alike are invariably ready 
and willing to voice their gratitude and their 
everlasting appreciation of the help and com- 
fort provided by those who are attached to lay 
organisations having for the time being a more 
or less military complexion; they are equally 
[273] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

ready to score the incompetents who infre- 
quently turn up in these auxiliary branches of 
the service. A man who is fighting Fritz is apt 
to have a short temper anyhow, and meddle- 
some busybodies who want to aid without 
knowing any of the rudiments make him see 
red and swear blue. 

A general of division told me that when he 
moved in with his command to the sector 
which he then was occupying he was tagged 
by an undoubtedly earnest but undeniably 
pestiferous person who wanted everything else 
suspended until his purposes in accompanying 
the expedition had been satisfied. 

"I was a fairly busy person along about 
then," said the general. "We were within 
reach of the enemy's big guns and his aero- 
planes were giving us considerable bother, and 
what with getting a sufficiency of dugouts and 
trench shelters provided for the troops and 
attending to about a million other things of 
more or less importance from a military stand- 
point I had mighty little time to spare for side 
issues; and my officers had less. 

"But the person I am speaking of kept after 
me constantly. His idea was that the men 
needed recreation and needed it forthwith. He 
was there to provide this recreation without 
delay, and he couldn't understand why there 
should be any delay in attending to his wishes. 

"Finally, to get rid of him, I gave orders that 
a noncommissioned officer and a squad of men 
[274] 



CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

sLiould be taken away from whatever else they 
were doing and told off to aid our self-appointed 
amusement director in doing whatever it was 
he wanted done. It was the only way short of 
putting him under arrest that would relieve me 
of a common nuisance and leave my staff free 
to do their jobs. 

*'Well, it seemed that the young man had 
brought along with him a tent and a moving- 
picture outfit and a supply of knockdown seats. 
Under his direction the detail of men set up the 
tent on an open site which he selected upon the 
very top of a little hill, where it stood out against 
the sky line like a target; which, in a way of 
speaking, was exactly what it was. Then he 
installed his moving-picture machine and ranged 
his chairs in rows and announced that that 
evening there would be a free show. I may add 
that I knew nothing of this at the time, and 
inasmuch as the recreation man was known to 
be acting by my authority with a free hand no 
officer felt called upon to interfere, I suppose. 

"The show started promptly on time, with 
a large and enthusiastic audience of enlisted 
men on hand and with the tent all lit up inside. 
In the midst of the darkness roundabout it 
must have loomed up like a lighthouse. Natu- 
rally there were immediate consequences. 

"Before the first reel was halfway unrolled 
a boche flying man came sailing over, with the 
notion of making us unhappy in our under- 
ground shelters if he could. He found a 
[275] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

shining mark waiting for him, so dropped a 
bomb at that tent. Luckily the bomb missed 
the tent, but it struck alongside of it and the 
concussion blew the canvas flat. The men 
came out from under the flattened folds and 
stampeded for the dugouts, wrecking the 
moving-picture machine in their flight. And 
the next day we were shy one amusement 
director. He had gone away from there. " 

In the Army itself there are exceedingly few 
members of the Bejones of Tuxedo family, and 
this, I take it, is a striking evidence of the 
average high intelligence of the men who have 
been chosen to oflScer our forces, considering 
that we started at scratch to mould millions 
of civilians into soldiers and considering also 
how necessary it was at the outset to issue a 
great number of commissions overnight, as it 
were. Howsomever, now and again a curious 
ornithological specimen does bob up, wearing 
shoulder straps. 

A party of civilians, observers, were sent to 
France by a friendly power to have a look at 
our troops. When they reached General Head- 
quarters they were being escorted by a beard- 
less youth with the bars of a second lieutenant 
on his coat. He also wore two bracelets, one 
of gold and one of silver, on his right wrist. 
He also spoke with a fascinating lisp. He went 
straight to the office of the officer commanding 
the Intelligence Section. 

"Colonel," he says, "I regard it as a great 
[276] 



CONDUCTING WAR BY DELEGATION 

mistake to send me out here with this party. 
My work is really in Paris. " 

"Well," said the colonel, "you let Paris 
worry along without you as best it can while 
you toddle along and accompany these visiting 
gentlemen over such-and-such a sector. Oh, 
yes, there is one other thing: Kindly close the 
door behind you on your way out." 

The braceleted one hid his petulance behind 
a salute, his jewelry meanwhile jingling pleas- 
antly, and withdrew from the presence. For 
two days in an automobile he toured with his 
charge, at a safe distance behind the front lines. 
On the evening of the second day, when they 
reached the railroad station to await the train 
which would carry them back to Paris, he was 
heard to remark with a heartfelt but lispy sigh 
of relief: "Well, thank heaven for one thing 
anyhow — I have done my bit!" 

Without being in possession of the exact 
facts I nevertheless hazard the guess that this 
young person either has been sent or shortly 
will be going back to his native land. Weeding- 
out is one of the best things this Army of our 
does. It would be well, in my humble judg- 
ment, if folks at home followed the Army's 
example in this regard, but conducted the weed- 
ing-out process over there. 

For men and women who can be of real 
service, who can endure hardships without col- 
lapsing and without complaining, who can fend 
for themselves when emergencies arise, who are 
[277] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

self-reliant, competent, well skilled in their 
vocations, there is need here in France in the 
Red Cross, in the Y. M. C. A., in the Y. M. H. A., 
in the K. of C, in the hospitals, in the telephone 
exchanges, the motor service, the ambulance 
service and in scores of other fields of depart- 
mental and allied activity. If these persons 
can speak a little French, so much the better. 

But for the camouflaged malingerer, for the 
potential slacker, for the patriotic but un- 
qualified zealot, for the incompetent one who 
mistakes enthusiasm for ability, and for the 
futile commission member there is no room 
whatsoever. This job of knocking the mania 
out of Germania is a big job, and the closer one 
gets to it the bigger it appears. We can't make 
it absolutely a fool-proof war, but by a proper 
discrimination exercised at home we can reduce 
the number of Americans in Europe for whose 
presence here there appears to be no valid 
excuse whatsoever. 

P. S. I hope they read these few lines in 
Washington. 



[278] 



CHAPTER XVII 
YOUNG BLACK JOE 



YOU rode along a highroad that was 
built wide and ran straight, miles on, 
and through a birch forest that was 
very dense and yet somehow very 
orderly, as is the way with French highroads, 
and with French forests, too, and after a while 
you came to where the woods frazzled away 
from close-ranked white trunks into a fringing 
of lacy undergrowth, all giddy and all gaudy 
with wild flowers of many a colour. 

Here, in a narrow clearing that traversed 
the thickets at right angles to the course you 
had been following, there disclosed himself 
a high-garbed North American mule, a little 
bit under weight, so that his backbone stood out 
sharply like the ridgepole of a roof pitched 
steep, with hollows by his hip joints to catch 
the rain water in. Viewing him astern or on the 
quarter you discerned that his prevalent archi- 
tecture, though mixed, inclined to the mansard 
type. Viewing him bow-on you observed that 
he wore a gas mask upon his high and narrow 
[279] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

temples and that from beneath this adornment, 
which would be startling elsewhere but which 
at the Front is both commonplace and cus- 
tomary, he contemplated the immediate fore- 
ground with half-closed, indolent eyes and 
altogether was as much at home as though 
his chin rested upon the hickory top rider of a 
snake fence in his native Ozarks instead of 
resting, as it did, athwart the crosspiece of a 
low signpost reading: "Danger Beyond — ^AU 
Cars Halt Here! Proceed Afoot!" 

You might be sure that never did any mule 
born in Missouri take his languid ease amid 
surroundings more unique for a mule to be in, 
inside or outside of that sovereign common- 
wealth. There was, to begin with, his gas mask, 
draped upon the spindled brow and ready, on 
warning, to be yanked down over the muzzle 
and latched fast beneath the throat; probably 
as a veteran mule he was used to that. But 
there were other things: High- velocity shells 
from a battery of six-inches somewhere in the 
woods to the west were going over his head at 
regular half-minute intervals, each in its pas- 
sage making a sound as though everybody on 
earth in chorus had said "Whew-w-w-!" — like 
that. Merely by cocking an eyelid aloft he 
could have beheld, sundry thousands of feet 
up, three French combat planes hunting a 
German raider back to his own lines, the 
French motors humming steadily like honey- 
bees but the German droning to a deeper note 

[280] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



with sullen heavy rift tones breaking into its 
cadences, for all the world like one of those big 
noisy beetles that invade your bedchamber on 
a hot night. Merely by squinting straight 
ahead he could have seen at the farther edge 
of the little glade a triple row of white crosses, 
each set off by the wooden rosette device in red, 
white and blue with which the French, when 
given time, mark the graves of their fallen 
fighters. Merely by sniffing he could have 
caught from a mile distant the faint but un- 
mistakable reek that hangs over battlefields 
when they are getting to be old battlefields but 
are not yet very old, and that nearly always 
distresses green work animals at the first time of 
taking it into their nostrils. None of these 
things he did though, but remained content 
and motionless save for his wagging ears and 
his switching tail and his uneasy lower lip. 
He was just standing there, letting the hot 
sunshine seep into him through all his pores. 

Otherwise, however, his more adjacent set- 
tings were in a manner of speaking conventional 
and according to mules. For he was attached by 
virtue of an improvised gear of wire ropes and 
worn leather breeching to a small flat car that 
bestraddled a rusty railroad track; and at his 
head stood a ginger-coloured youth of twenty 
years or thereabouts. In our own land you 
somehow expect, when you find a mule engaged 
in industry, to find an American of African 
antecedents managing him. So the combina- 

[281 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

tion was in keeping with the popular conception. 
Only in this instance the attendant youth wore 
part of a uniform and had a steel shrapnel hel- 
met clamped down upon his skull. 

Said youth caught a nod from a corporal of his 
own race who lounged against a broken wall, 
the wall being practically all that remained of 
what once had been the home of a crossings 
guard alongside a railroad that was a real 
railroad no longer; and at that he climbed 
nimbly on muleback. 

He gathered up the guiding strings, and this 
then was the starting signal he gave as he 
showed all his teeth — he seemed to have fifty 
teeth at least — in a gorgeous and friendly grin: 
"All abo'd fur the Fifty-nint' Street crosstown 
line!" 

By that you would have known, if you 
knew your New York at all, that this particular 
muleteer must hail from that nook of Li'l Ole 
Manhattan which since the days of the Yanko- 
Spanko war, when a certain group of black 
troopers did a certain valiant thing, has been 
called San Juan Hill, and that away off here 
where now he was, in the back edges of France, 
he had in his own mind at the moment a picture 
of West Fifty-ninth Street as it might look — 
and probably would — on this bright warm after- 
noon, stretching as a narrow band, biaswise, 
of the town from the Black Belt on the West 
Side with its abutting chop-suey parlours and 
its fragrant barber shops and its clubrooms for 
[ 282 ] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



head and side waiters, on past Columbus 
Circle into the lighter coloured districts to the 
eastward; and likewise that since he did have 
the image in his mind he perhaps grinned his 
toothful grin to hide a pang of homesickness 
for the place where he belonged. 

I figured that I knew these things, who had 
journeyed by motor with two more for a hundred 
and eighty miles across country to pay a visit to 
the first sector in our front lines that had been 
taken over by a regiment of negro volunteers — 
now by reason of departmental classifyings 
known as the Three Hundred and Somethingth 
of the American Expeditionary Forces. Be- 
cause New York was where I also belonged, and 
this genial postilion was of a breed made familiar 
to me long time ago in surroundings vastly 
dissimilar to these present ones. 

To the three of us word had come, no matter 
how, that negro troops of ours were in the line. 
No authoritative announcement to that effect 
having been forthcoming, we were at the first 
hearing of the news skeptical. To be sure the 
big movement overseas was at last definitely 
and audaciously under way; the current month's 
programme called for the landing on French soil 
of two hundred thousand Americans of fighting 
age and fighting dispositions, which contract, I 
might add, was carried out so thoroughly that 
not only the promised two hundred thousand 
but a good and heaping measure of nearly sixty 
thousand more on top of that arrived before the 
[ ass ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

thirtieth. It is The Glory of the Coming all 
right, this great thing that has happened this 
summer over here, and I am glad that mine 
eyes have seen it. It is almost the finest thing 
that the eye of an American of this generation 
has yet seen or is likely to see before Germany 
herself is invaded. 

But even though the sea lanes were streaky 
with the wakes of our convoys and the dis- 
embarkation ports cluttered with our transports, 
we doubted that coloured troops were as yet 
facing the enemy across the barbed-wire boun- 
daries that separate him from us. Possibly this 
was because we had grown accustomed to think- 
ing of our negroes as members of labour battalions 
working along the lines of communication — 
unloading ships and putting up warehouses and 
building depots and felling trees in the forests 
of France, which seem doomed to fall either 
through shelling or by the axes of the timbering 
crews of the Allies. 

"You must be wrong," we said to him who 
brought us the report. "You must have seen 
an unusually big lot of^Jnegroes going up to work 
in the lumber camps in the "v^oods at the north. " 

"No such thing," he said. "I tell you that 
we've got black soldiers on the job — at least 
two regiments of them. There's a draft regi- 
ment from somewhere down South, and another 
regiment from one of the Eastern States — one of 
the old National Guard outfits I think it is — 
about fifteen miles to the east of the first lot. 
[ 284 ] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



Here, I can show you about where they are — 
if anybody's got a map handy. " 

Everybody had a map handy. A corre- 
spondent no more thinks of moving about with- 
out a map than he thinks of moving about 
without a gas mask and a white paper, which is a 
pass. He wouldn't dare move without the 
mask; he couldn't move far without the pass, and 
the next to these two the map is the most 
needful part of his travelling equipment. 

So that was how the quest started. As we 
came nearer to the somewhat indefinitely 
located spot for which we sought, the signs 
that we were on a true trail multiplied, in bits of 
evidence offered by supply-train drivers who 
told us they lately had met negro troopers on 
the march in considerable number. As a 
matter of fact there were then four black regi- 
ments instead of two taking up sector positions 
in our plan of defence. However, that fact was 
to develop later through a statement put forth 
with the approval of the censor at General 
Headquarters. 

After some seven hours of reasonably swift 
travel in a high-powered car we had left behind 
the more peaceful districts back of the debatable 
areas and were entering into the edges of a 
village that had been shot to bits in the great 
offensive of 1914, which afterward had been 
partially rebuilt and which lately had been 
abandoned again, after the great offensive of 
1918 started. 

[285] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Right here from somewhere in the impending 
clutter of nondescript ruination we heard many 
voices singing all together. The song was a 
strange enough song for these surroundings. 
Once before in my life and only once I have 
heard it, and that was five years ago on an 
island off the coast of Georgia. I don't think 
it ever had a name and the author of it had 
somehow got the Crucifixion and the Discovery 
of America confused in his mind. 

We halted the car behind the damaged wall of 
an abandoned garden, not wishing to come upon 
the unseen choristers until they had finished. 
Their voices rose with the true camp-meeting 
quaver, giving reverence to the lines: 

In FoHeen Hunnerd an' Ninety-one 
'Twuz den my Saviour's work begun. 

And next the chorus, long-drawn-out and 
mournful: 

Oh, dey nailed my Saviour 'pon de cross. 
But he never spoke a mumhlin word. 

I was explaining to my companions, both of 
them Northern-born, that mumbling in the 
language of the tidewater darky means com- 
plaining and not what it means with us, but 
they bade me hush while we hearkened to the 
next two verses, each of two lines, with the 
chorus repeated after the second line: 

In Fo'teen Hunnerd an' Ninety-two 
My Lawd begin his work to do! 

[286] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



In Fo'teen Hunnerd an' Ninety-three 
Dey nailed my Saviour on de gallows tree. 

And back to the first verse — there were only 
three verses, it seemed — and through to the 
third, over and over again. 

An invisible choir leader broke in with a 
different song and the others caught it up. But 
this one we all knew — My Soul Bears Witness 
to de Lawd — so we started the machine and 
rode round from back of the wall. The singers, 
twenty or more of them, were lying at ease on 
the earth alongside a house in the bright, bak- 
ing sunshine of a still young but very ardent 
summer. On beyond them everywhere the 
place swarmed with their fellows in khaki, some 
doing nothing at all and some doing the things 
that an American soldier, be he black or white, 
is apt to do when off duty in billets. Almost 
without exception they were big men, with 
broad shoulders and necks like bullocks, and 
their muscles bulged their sleeves almost to 
bursting. From the fact that nine out of ten 
were coal-black and from a certain intonation in 
their voices never found among up-country 
negroes, a man familiar with the dialects and 
the types of the Far South might know them for 
natives of the rice fields and the palmetto bar- 
rens of the coast. Lower Georgia and South 
Carolina — there was where they had come from 
plainly enough, with perhaps a sprinkling among 
them of Florida negroes. Our course, steered 
[287] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

as it was by chance reckoning, had nevertheless 
been a true one. 

We had found the draft outfit first. By the 
same token, if our original informant had been 
right, another negro regiment — of volunteers 
this time — would be found some fifteen miles 
to the eastward and northward of where we 
were; and this latter unit was the one whose 
whereabouts we mainly desired to discover, 
since, if it turned out to be the regiment we 
thought it must be, its colonel would be a 
personal friend of all three of us and his adjutant 
would be a former copy reader who had served 
on the staff of the same evening newspaper 
years before, with two of us. 

We halted a while to pay our respects to the 
commander of these strapping big black men — 
a West Pointer, still in his thirties and in- 
ordinately proud of the outfit that was under 
him. He had cause to be. I used to think 
that sitting down was the natural gait of the 
tidewater darky; but here, as any one who 
looked might see, were soldiers who bore them- 
selves as smartly, who were as snappy at the 
salute and as sharp set at the drill as any of 
their lighter-skinned fellow Americans in service 
anywhere. Most of the oflScers were Southern- 
born men, they having been purposely picked 
because of a belief that they would understand 
the negro temperament. That the choosing of 
Southern officers had been a sane choosing was 
proved already, I think, by what we saw as well 
1 288 ] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



as by things we heard that day. For example, 
one of the majors — a young Tennesseean — told 
us this tale, laughing while he told us : 

"We've abolished two of our sentry posts in 
this town. Right over yonder, beyond what's 
left of the village church, is what's left of the 
village cemetery. I'll take you to see it if you 
care to go, though it's not a very pleasant sight. 
For a year or'tnore back in 1914 and 1915 shells 
used to fall in it pretty regularly and rip open 
the graves and scatter the bones of those poor 
folks who were buried there — you know the 
sort of thing you're likely to find in any of these 
little places that have been under heavy bom- 
bardment. Well, when we moved here a week 
and a half ago and got settled a delegation from 
the ranks waited on the C. O. They told him 
that they had come over here to fight the 
Germans and that they were wiUing to fight 
the Germans and anxious to start the job right 
away, but that, discipline or no discipline, v/ar 
or no war, orders or no orders, they just natu- 
rally couldn't be made to hang round a cemetery 
after dark. 

" *Kernul, suh,' the spokesman said, *ef you 
posts any of us cullud boys 'longside dat air 
buryin' ground, w'y long about midnight some- 
thin'U happen an' you's sartain shore to be 
shy a couple of niggers when de mawnin' comes. 
Kernul, suh, we don't none of us wanter be 
shot fur runnin' 'way, but dat's perzactly 
whut's gwine happen ef ary one of us has to 
[ 289 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

march back an' fo'th by dat place w'en de 
darkness of de night sets in.' And the colonel 
understood, and he took mercy on 'em, so 
that's why if the Germans should happen to 
arrive at night by way of the graveyard they 
could march right among us, probably without 
having a shot fired at them. 

"But don't think our boys are afraid," the 
young major added with pride in his voice. 
"I'd take a chance on going anywhere with these 
black soldiers at my back. So would any of the 
rest of the officers. We haven't had any actual 
fighting experience yet — that'll come in a week 
or two when we relieve a French regiment that's 
just here in front of us holding the front lines — 
but we are not worrying about what '11 happen 
when we g;t our baptism of fire. Only I'm 
afraid we're going to have a mighty disappointed 
regiment on our hands in about two months 
from now, when these black boys of ours find 
out that even in the middle of August water- 
melons don't grow in Northern France." 

As we left the regimental headquarters, which 
was a half-shattered wine shop with breaches in 
the wall and less than half a roof to its top 
floor, the young major went along with us to 
our car to give our chauffeur better directions 
touching on a maze of cross roads along the last 
lap of the run. 

En route he enriched my notebook with a 
lovely story, having the merit moreover — a merit 
that not all lovely stories have — of being true. 

[ 290 ] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



"Day before yesterday," so his narrative 
ran, *'we began drilling the squads in grenade 
throwing — with live grenades. Up until then 
we'd exercised them only on dummy grenades, 
but now they were going to try out the real 
thing. We had batches of the new grenades — 
the kind that are exploded by striking the cap at 
the lower end upon something hard. You 
probably know how the drill is carried on: 
At the call of 'One' from the squad commander 
the men strike the cap ends against a stone or 
something; at 'Two' they draw back the thing 
full arm length, and at 'Three' they toss it with 
a stiff overhand swing. There's plenty of 
time of course for all this if nobody fumbles, 
because the way the fuses are timed five seconds 
elapse between the striking of the cap and the 
explosion. If you fling your grenade too soon a 
Heinie is liable to pick it up and throw it back 
at you before it goes off. If you hold it too long 
you're apt to lose an arm or your life. That's 
why we are so particular about timing the 
movements. 

"Well, one squad lined up out here in a field 
with their eyes bulging out like china door 
knobs. They were game enough but they 
weren't very happy. The moment the word 
'One' was given a little stumpy darky in my 
battalion that we call Sugar Foot flung his 
grenade as far as he could. 

"When the rest of the grenades had been 
thrown the platoon commander jumped all over 
[291] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Sugar Foot. He said to him: 'Look here, 
what did you mean by throwing that grenade 
before these other boys threw theirs? Don't 
you know enough to wait for "Three" before 
you turn loose?' 

" *Yas, suh, lieutenant,' says Sugar Foot; 
*but I jes' natchelly had to th'ow it. W'y, 
lieutenant, I could feel dat thing a-swellin* 
in my hand.' " 

It may have been the same Sugar Foot — 
assuredly it was the likes of him — who gave 
us the salute so briskly as we sped out of the 
village on the far side from the side on which 
we entered it. Followed then a swift cours- 
ing through a French-held sector wherein 
at each unfolding furlong of chalky-white 
highway we beheld sights which, being totted 
up, would have made enough to write a book 
about, say three years back. But three years 
back is ancient history in this war, and 
what once would have run into chapters is 
now worth no more than a paragraph, if that 
much. 

At the end of this leg of the journey we were 
well out of the static zone and well into the 
active one. And so, after going near where 
sundry French batteries ding-donged away with 
six-inch shells — shrapnel, high explosives and 
gas in equal doses — at a German position five 
miles away, we emerged from the protecting 
screenage of forest after the fashion stated in 
the opening sentences of this chapter, and learned 

[292] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



that we had landed where we had counted on 
landing when we started out. 

It was the regiment we were looking for, 
sure enough. Its colonel, our friend, having 
been apprised by telephone from two miles 
rearward at one of his battalion headquarters 
that we were approaching, had sent word per 
runner that he waited to welcome us down at his 
present station just behind the forward observa- 
tion posts. 

So we climbed aboard the one piece of rolling 
stock that was left astride the metals of a road 
over which, until August of 1914, transconti- 
nental trains had whizzed, and the ginger- 
colored humourist slapped the sloping withers of 
his steed and that patient brute flinched a 
protesting flinch that ran through his frame 
from neck to flanks, and we were off for the 
front trenches by way of the Fifty-ninth Street 
cross-town line on as unusual a journey as I, 
for one, have taken since coming over here to 
this war-worn country, where the unusual thing 
is the common thing these days. Off with an 
ex-apartment-house doorman from San Juan 
Hill, New York City, for our steersman; a 
creaking small flat car for a chariot; a home- 
grown mule for motive power; a Yankee second 
lieutenant and a French liaison officer for added 
passengers; and for special scenic touches along- 
side the bramble-grown cut through which we 
jogged, machine guns so mounted as to com- 
mand aisles chopped through the thickets, and 
[293] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

three-inch guns plying busily at an unseen 
objective. To this add the whewful remarks 
let fall in passing by the big ones from farther 
back as they conversed among themselves on 
their way over to annoy the Hun, and at inter- 
vals aerial skirmishes occurring away up over- 
head — 'twas a braw and a bonny day for aerial 
fighting, as a stage Scotchman might say — and 
you will have a fairly complete picture of the 
ensemble in your own mind, I trust. But don't 
forget to stir in the singing of birds and the 
buzzing of insects. 

The negro troopers we encountered now, 
here in the copses, sometimes singly or oftener 
still in squads and details, were dissimilar 
physically as well as in certain temperamental 
respects to their fellows of the draft regiment 
we had seen a little while before. They were 
apt to be mulattoes or to have light-brown 
complexions instead of clear black; they were 
sophisticated and town wise in their bearing; 
their idioms differed from those others, and 
their accents too; for almost without exception 
they were city dwellers and many of them had 
been born North, whereas the negroes from 
Dixie were rural products drawn out of the 
heart of the Farther South. But for all of them 
might be said these things : They were soldiers 
who wore their uniforms with a smartened 
pride; who were jaunty and alert and prompt 
in their movements; and who expressed, as 
some did vocally in my hearing, and all did 

[294] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



by their attitude, a sincere and heartfelt in- 
clination to get a whack at the foe with the 
shortest possible delay. I am of the opinion 
personally — and I make the assertion with all 
the better grace, I think, seeing that I am a 
Southerner with all of the Southerner's inherited 
and acquired prejudices touching on the race 
question — that as a result of what our black 
soldiers are going to do in this war, a word that 
has been uttered billions of times in our coun- 
try, sometimes in derision, sometimes in hate, 
sometimes in all kindliness — but which I am 
sure never fell on black ears but it left behind a 
sting for the heart — is going to have a new 
meaning for all of us. South and North too, and 
that hereafter n-i-g-g-e-r will merely be another 
way of spelling the word American. 

However, that is getting in the moral of my 
tale before I am anywhere near its proper 
conclusion. The reader consenting, we'll go 
back to the place where we were just now, 
when we rode over the one-mule traffic line to 
the greeting that had been organised for us two 
miles away. By chance we had chosen a most 
auspicious moment for our arrival. For word 
had just been received touching on the honours 
which the French Government had been pleased 
to confer upon two members of the regiment, 
Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, to wit, 
as follows: For each the War Cross and for 
each a special citation before the whole French 
Army, and in addition a golden palm, signifying 
[ 295 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

extraordinary valour, across the red-and-green 
ribbon of Johnson's decoration. So it was 
shortly coming to pass that a negro, almost 
surely, would be the first private of the American 
Expeditionary Forces to get a golden palm 
along with his Croix de Guerre. It might be 
added, though the statement is quite super- 
fluous in view of the attendant circumstances, 
that he earned it. 

Through the cable dispatches which my 
companions straightway sent, they being corre- 
spondents for daily papers, America learned 
how Johnson and Roberts, two comparatively 
green recruits, were attacked at night in a 
front-line strong point by a raiding party 
estimated to number between twenty and 
twenty-five; and how after both had been 
badly wounded and after Roberts had gone 
down with a shattered leg he, lying on his back, 
flung hand grenades with such effect that he 
blew at least one of the raiders to bits of scrap 
meat; and how Johnson first with bullets, then 
with his clubbed rifle after he had emptied it, 
and finally with his bolo gave so valiant an ac- 
count of himself that the attacking party fled 
back to their own lines, abandoning most of 
their equipment and carrying with them at least 
five of their number, who had been either killed 
outright or most despitefuUy misused by the 
valiant pair. If ever proof were needed, 
which it is not, that the colour of a man's skin 
has nothing to do with the colour of his soul 
[296] 



YOUNG BLACK JOE 



these twain then and there offered it in abun- 
dance. 

The word of what the French military 
authorities meant to do having been received, 
it had spread, and its lesson was bearing fruit. 
So we found out when the colonel took us 
on a journey through the forward trenches. 
Every other private and every other noncom. 
we ran across had his rifle apart and was care- 
fully oiling it. If they were including the 
coloured boys now when it came to passing 
round those crosses he meant to get one too, 
and along with it a mess of Germans — Bush- 
Germans, by his way of expression. The negro 
soldier in France insists on pronouncing boche as 
Bush, and on coupling the transmogrified word 
to the noun German, possibly because the 
African mind loves mouth-filling phrases or 
perhaps just to make all the clearer that, 
according to his concepts, every boche is a 
German and every German is a boche. 

As we passed along we heard one short 
and stumpy private, with a complexion like 
the bottom of a coal mine and a smile like 
the sudden lifting of a piano lid, call out to a 
mate as he fitted his greased rifle together: 

"Henry Johnson, he done right well, didn't 
he? But say, boy, effen they'll jes gimme a 
razor an' a armload of bricks an' one half 
pint of bust-haid licker I kin go plum to Berlin. " 



[297] 



CHAPTER XVIII 
"LET'S GO!" 



THE most illuminating insight of all, 
into the strengthened ambition which 
animated the rank and file of the Old 
Fifteenth was vouchsafed to us as we 
three, following along behind the tall shape of 
the Colonel, rounded a corner of a trench and 
became aware of a soldier who sat cross-legged 
upon his knees with his back turned to us and 
was so deeply intent upon the task in hand 
that he never heeded our approach at all. On 
a silent signal from our guide we tiptoed near 
so we could look downward over the bent 
shoulders of the unconscious one and this, 
then, was what we saw: 

A small, squarely built individual, of the 
colour of a bottle of good cider-vinegar, who 
balanced upon his knees a slab of whitish stone 
— it looked like a scrap of tombstone and I am 
inclined to think that is what it was — and in his 
two hands, held by the handle, a bolo with a 
nine-inch blade. First he would anoint the 
uppermost surface of the white slab after the 
[298] 



"let's go!" 

ordained fashion of those who use whetstones, 
then industriously he would hone his blade; 
then he would try its edge upon his thumb and 
then anoint and whet some more. And all 
the while, under his breath, he crooned a little 
wordless, humming song which had in it some of 
the menace of a wasp's petulant buzzing. He 
was making war-medicine. A United States 
soldier whose remote ancestors by preference 
fought hand to hand with their enemies, was 
qualifying to see Henry Johnson and go him 
one better. The picture was too sweet a one to 
be spoiled by breaking in on it. We slipped 
back out of sight so quietly the knife-sharpener 
could never have suspected that spying eyes 
had looked in upon him as he engaged in these 
private devotions of his. 

"They're all like that buddy with the bolo, 
and some of them are even more so," said 
the colonel after we had tramped back again 
to the dugout in a chalk cliff, which he tem- 
porarily occupied as a combination parlour, 
boudoir, office, breakfast room and head- 
quarters. "We were a pretty green outfit when 
they brought us over here. Why, even after 
we got over to France some of my boys 
used to write me letters tendering their res- 
ignations, to take effect immediately. They 
had come into the service of their own 
free will — as volunteers in the National Guard 
— so when they got tired of soldiering, as a 
few of them did at first, they couldn't under- 
[ 299 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

stand why they shouldn't go out of their own 
free wills. 

"They used us on construction work down 
near one of the ports for a while after we landed. 
Then here a couple of weeks ago they sent us 
up to take over this sector. The men are fond 
of saying that all they had by way of prepara- 
tion for the job was four days' drilling and a 
haircut. 

"Did I say just now that we were green? 
Well, that doesn't half describe it, let me tell 
you. This sector was calm enough, as front- 
line sectors go, when we took it over. But the 
first night my fellows had hardly had time 
enough to learn to find their way about the 
trenches when from a forward rifle pit a rocket 
of a certain colour went up, signifying: 'We 
are being attacked by tanks.' 

"It gave me quite a shock, especially as there 
had been no artillery preparation from Fritz's 
side of the wire, and besides there is a swamp 
between the lines right in front of where that 
rifle pit is, so I didn't exactly see how tanks were 
going to get across unless the Germans ferried 
them over in skiffs. So before calling out the 
regiment I decided to make a personal investi- 
gation. But before I had time to start on it 
two more rockets went up from another rifle 
pit at the left of the first one, and according to 
the code these rockets meant: *Lift your 
barrage — we are about to attack in force.' 
Since we hadn't been putting down any barrage 
[ 300 ] 



"let's go !" 

and there was no reason for an attack and no 
order for one this gave me another shock. So 
I put out hot-foot to find out what was the 
matter. 

"It seemed a raw recruit in the first pit had 
found a box of rockets. Just for curiosity, I 
suppose, or possibly because he wished to show 
the Bush-Germans that he regarded the whole 
thing as being in the nature of a celebration, 
or maybe because he just wanted to see what 
would happen afterward, he touched off one 
of them. And then a fellow down the line 
seeing this rocket decided, I guess, that a 
national holiday of the French was being 
observed and so he touched off two. But it 
never will happen again. 

"The very next night we had a gas alarm two 
miles back of here in the next village, where 
one of my battalions is billeted. It turned out 
to be a false alarm, but all through the camp 
the sentries were sounding their automobile 
horns as a warning for gas masks. But Major 
Blank's orderly didn't know the meaning of the 
signals, or if he did know he forgot it in the 
excitement of the moment. Still he didn't 
lose his head altogether. As he heard the 
sound of the tootings coming nearer and nearer 
he dashed into the major's billet — the major is 
a very sound sleeper — and grabbed him by the 
shoulder and shook him right out of his blankets. 

"'Wake up, major!' he yelled, trying to 
keep on shaking with one hand and to salute 

[301] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

with the other. 'Fur Gawd's sake, suh, wake 
up. The Germans is comin' — in automo- 
biles !' 

"Oh yes, they were green at the start; but 
they are as game as any men in this man's 
Army are. You take it from me, because I 
know. They weren't afraid of the cold and 
the wet and the terrific labour when they 
worked last winter down near the coast of 
France on as mean a job of work as anybody 
ever tackled. They were up to their waists 
in cold water part of the time — yes, most of 
the time they were — but not a one of them 
flinched. And believe me there's no flinching 
among them now that we are up against the 
Huns! You don't need the case of Johnson 
and Roberts to prove it. It is proved by the 
attitude of every single man among them. 
It isn't hard to send them into danger — the hard 
part is to keep them from going into it on their 
own accord. They say the dark races can't 
stand the high explosives — that their nerves 
go to pieces under the strain of the terrific 
concussion. If that be so the representatives 
of the dark races that come from America are 
the exceptions to the rule. My boys are 
getting fat and sassy on a fare of bombings and 
bombardments, and we have to watch them 
like hawks to keep them from slipping off on 
little independent raiding parties without telling 
anybody about it in advance. Their real test 
hasn't come yet, but when it does come you 

[302} 



LETS GO : 

take a tip from me and string your bets along 
with this minstrel troupe to win. 

"My men have a catch phrase that has come 
to be their motto and their slogan. Tell any 
one of them to do a certain thing and as he 
gets up to go about it he invariably says, 
'Let's go!' Tell a hundred of them to do a 
thing and they'll say the same thing. I hear 
it a thousand times a day. The mission may 
involve discomfort or the chance of a sudden 
and exceedingly violent death. No matter — 
'Let's go!' that's the invariable answer. Per- 
sonally I think it makes a pretty good maxim 
for an outfit of fighting men, and I'll stake my 
life on it that they'll live up to it when the real 
trial comes. " 

Two days we stayed on there, and they were 
two days of a superior variety of continuous 
black-face vaudeville. There was the evening 
when for our benefit the men organised an 
impromptu concert featuring a quartet that 
would succeed on any man's burlesque circuit, 
and a troupe of buck-and-wing dancers whose 
equals it would be hard to find on the Big 
Time. There was the next evening when the 
band of forty pieces serenaded us. I think 
surely this must be the best regimental band in 
our Army. Certainly it is the best one I have 
heard in Europe during this war. On parade 
when it played the Memphis Blues the men did 
not march; the music poured in at their ears 
and ran down to their heels, and instead of 

[ 303 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

marcliing they literally danced their way along. 
As for the dwellers of the French towns in which 
this regiment has from time to time been 
quartered, they, I am told, fairly go mad when 
some alluring, compelling, ragtime tune is 
played with that richness of syncopated melody 
in it which only the black man can achieve; 
and as the regiment has moved on, more than 
once it has been hard to keep the unattached 
inhabitants of the village that the band was 
quitting from moving on with it. 

If I live to be a hundred and one I shall never 
forget the second night, which was a night 
of a splendid, flawless full moon. We stood 
with the regimental staff on the terraced lawn 
of the chief house in a half-deserted town five 
miles back from the trenches, and down below 
us in the main street the band played plantation 
airs and hundreds of negro soldiers joined in 
and sang the words. Behind the masses of 
upturned dark faces was a ring of white ones 
where the remaining natives of the place 
clustered, with their heads wagging in time 
to the tunes. 

And when the band got to Way Down Upon 
the Swanee River I wanted to cry, and when 
the drum major, who likewise had a splendid 
barytone voice, sang, as an interpolated number, 
Joan of Arc, first in English and then in excel- 
lent French, the villagers openly cried; and an 
elderly peasant, heavily whiskered, with the 
tears of a joyous and thankful enthusiasm 

[304] 



I'> 



LET S GO : 

running down his bearded cheeks, was with 
diflSculty restrained from throwing his arms 
about the soloist and kissing him. When this 
type of Frenchman feels emotion he expresses 
it moistly. 

Those two days we heard stories without 
number, all of them true, I take it, and most 
of them good ones. We heard of the yellow 
youth who beseeched his oflScer to send him 
with a "dang'ous message" meaning by that 
that he craved to go on a perilous mission for 
the greater glory of the A. E. F. and incidentally 
of himself; and about the jaunty individual who 
pulled the firing wire of a French grenade and 
catching the hissing sound of the fulminator 
working its way toward the charge exclaimed: 
"That's it — fry, gosh dern you, fry!" before he 
threw it. And about how a sergeant on an 
emergency trench-digging job stuck to the task, 
standing hip-deep in icy water and icy mud, 
until from chill and exhaustion he dropped un- 
conscious and was like to drown in the muck 
into which he had collapsed head downward, 
only his squad discovered him up-ended there 
and dragged him out; and about many other 
things small or great, bespeaking fortitude and 
courage and fidelity and naive Afric waggery. 

Likewise into my possession came copies of 
two documents, both of which I should say are 
typical just as each is distinctive of a different 
phase of the negro temperament. One of them, 
the first one, was humorous. Indeed to my^ 

[305] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

way of thinking it was as fine an example 
of unconscious humour as this war is likely 
to produce. The other was — well, judge for 
yourself. 

Before the regiment moved forward for its 
dedication to actual warfare it was impressed 
upon the personnel in the ranks that from now 
on, more even than before, a soldier in his 
communications with his superior officer must 
use the formal and precise language of military 
propriety. The lesson must have sunk in, 
because on the thrillsome occasion when a 
certain private found himself for the first time 
in a forward rifle pit and for the first time 
heard German rifle bullets whistling past his 
ears he called to him a runner and dispatched to 
the secondary lines this message, now quoted 
exactly as written except that the proper names 
have been changed: 

"Lieutenant Sidney J. McClelland, 

"^Coramanding Company B, , A. E. F., 

U. S. A. ^ 

"Dear Sir: I am being fired on heavily from the 

left. I await your instructions. 

"Trusting these few lines will find you the same, 

I remain, Yours truly, 

"Jefferson Jones." 

The other thing was an extract from a 
letter written by an eighteen-year-old private 
to his old mother in New York, with no idea 
in his head when he wrote it that any eyes 
other than those of his own people would read 
[806] 



LET S GO 



f 



it after it had been censored and posted. The 
officer to whom it came for censoring copied 
from it one paragraph, and this paragraph ran 
Hke this: 

^" Mammy, these French people don't bother with 
no colour-Hne business. They treat us so good that 
the only time I ever knows I'm coloured is when I 
looks in the glass." 

Coming away — and we came reluctantly — 
we skirted the edge of the billeting area where 
the regiment of Southern negroes was quartered, 
and again we heard them singing. But this 
time they sang no plaintive meeting-house air. 
They sang a ringing, triumphant, Glory-Glory- 
Hallelujah song. For — so we learned — to them 
the word had come that they were about to 
move up and perhaps come to grips with the 
Bush-Germans. Yes, most assuredly n-i-g- 
g-e-r is going to have a different meaning when 
this war ends. 



[307] 



CHAPTER XIX 
WAR AS IT ISN'T 



THREE of us, correspondents, had gone 
up with a division of ours that was 
taking over one of the Picardy sectors. 
The French moved out by degrees as 
we by degrees moved in. On the night when 
we actually came into the front lines two of us 
slept — or tried to — in a house of a village 
perhaps a mile and a half behind the forward 
trenches. The third man went on perhaps a 
half mile nearer the trouble zone with a battalion 
of an infantry regiment that on the morrow 
would relieve some sorely battered poilus in the 
trenches. It is with an experience of this third 
man I now mean to deal. 

He found lodgment in a chateau on the out- 
skirts of a village the name of which does not 
matter — and probably never will matter again, 
seeing that it fairly was blasted out of the earth 
by its foundations the next time the Germans 
attempted to resume their advance toward the 
Channel. As for the chateau, which likewise 
must be quite gone by now, it was more of a 

[ 308] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



chateau than some of the buildings that go 
by this high-sounding title in the edges of 
Normandy. 

A chateau may mean a veritable castle of a 
place, with towers upon it and a moat and 
gardens and terraces and trout ponds round 
about it. Then again on the other hand it 
may mean merely a sizable private residence, 
standing somewhat aloof in its own plot from 
the close-huddled clustering of lesser folks' 
cottages that make up the town proper. The 
term is almost as elastic in its classifications 
as the word estate is in America. In this 
instance, though, the chateau was a structure 
of some pretensions and much consequence. 
Rather, it had been when its owner fled before 
the great spring advance, leaving behind him all 
that he owned except a few portable belongings. 
The neighbours had run away, too, and for 
months now the only tenants of the vicinity 
had been troops. 

French officers and a few American officers 
were occupying the chateau. Every room and 
every hallway was crowded already, but space 
for the correspondent to spread down his 
bedding roll was provided in an inner chamber 
on the second floor. At two o'clock in the 
morning, by consent of the divisional com- 
mander, he was going out into the debatable 
land between the trenches with a wire-mending 
party. There is always a chance that a wire 
party will bump into a squad of enemies on the 

[309] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

prowl or surprise a raiding outfit from Fritzie's 
trenches, and then there are doings to ensue. 

Two o'clock was four hours off and the special 
guest hoped to get a little sleep in the 'tween 
times. It was a vain hope, because, to judge 
by their behaviour, the Germans had found out 
a relief division was on its way in. Since 
nightfall they had been shelling the back areas 
of the sector, and particularly the lines of 
communication, with might and main — and six- 
inch guns. For the most part the shells were 
passing entirely over and far beyond the 
chateau, but they made quite as much noise 
as though they had been dropping in the court- 
yard outside — more noise, as a matter of 
seeming, because the screech of a big shell in its 
flight overhead racks the eardrums as the 
crash of the explosion rarely does unless the 
explosion occurs within a few rods of one. 

So for four hours or thereabouts our corre- 
spondent lay on his pallet, wide-eyed, and with 
every nerve in his body standing on end and 
wriggling. When the French liaison officer 
who had volunteered to escort him on the 
adventure rapped upon his door he was quite 
ready to start. He had taken off nothing 
except his trench helmet and his gas mask 
before turning in, anyhow. 

"Walk very quietly, if you please," bade the 
Frenchman, leading the way out, with a pocket 
flashlight in his hand. 

Obeying the request the correspondent tip- 

[310] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



toed along behind his guide. To get outdoors 
they passed through two other rooms and 
down a flight of stairs and along a hallway 
opening into the wrecked garden. In the beds 
that were in the rooms and upon blankets on 
the floors of the rooms and also in the hallway 
French officers were stretched, exhaling the 
heavy breaths of men who have worked hard 
and who need the rest they are taking. Only 
one man stirred, and that was downstairs as the 
pair who were departing picked their way 
between the double rows of sleepers. A loose 
plank creaked sharply under the weight of the 
American, and a man stirred in his coverlids 
and opened his eyes for a moment; and then, 
turning over, was off again almost instantly. 

At that, understanding came to the corre- 
spondent — ^he knew now why the thoughtful 
liaison officer had cautioned him to step lightly. 
To these men lying here about him the infernal 
clamour of the shells had become a customary 
part of their lives, whether waking or sleeping. 
To their natures, accustomed as they were to it, 
this hideous din was a lullaby song. But any 
small unusual sound, such as the noise of a 
booted foot falling upon a squeaky board, 
might rouse them, and two men clumping care- 
lessly past them would have brought every one 
of them out of his slumbers, sitting up. 

Paradoxes such as this are forever cropping 
up in one's wartime experiences. Indeed, war 
may be said to be made up of countless para- 

[311] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

doxes, overlapping and piled one upon another. 
To me the most striking of the outstanding 
manifestations of war on its paradoxical side 
is the fact that in this war nothing, or almost 
nothing, actually turns out in accordance with 
what one's idea of it had been beforehand. 
Looking backward on what I myself have viewed 
of its physical and metaphysical aspects I can 
think of scarcely an element or a phase which 
accorded with my preconceived brain image of 
the thing. I do not mean by this that as a 
spectacle it has been disappointing, but that 
almost invariably it has been different from 
what I was expecting it would be. I found this 
to be true in 1914, back at the very beginning. 
Take for example the fashion after which men 
bear themselves as they go into battle; and, 
for a more striking illustration than that, their 
customary deportment after they actually are 
in the battle. I figure that beforehand my 
own notion of what these two demonstrations 
would be like was based probably in part upon 
conceptions derived from old-time pictures of 
Civil War engagements, highly coloured, highly 
imaginative representations such as used to 
hang upon the parlour walls of every orthodox 
rural home in our country; and in part upon 
fiction stories with war for a background which 
I had read; and finally perhaps in some lesser 
part upon the moving-picture man's ideas as 
worked out with more or less artistic license in 
the pre-war films. I rather think the average 

[ 312] 



WAR AS IT isn't 



stay-at-home's notions in these regards must 
be pretty much what mine were, because he 
probably derived them from the same sources. 
The utter dissimilarity of the actual thing as I 
have repeatedly viewed it in three countries 
of Europe astonished me at first, and in lessen- 
ing degree continued to astonish me until the 
real picture of it had supplanted the conjured 
one in my mind. 

If the reader's ideas are still fundamentally 
organised as mine formerly were he thinks men 
on the edge of the fight, with the prospect 
before them of very shortly being at grips with 
the enemy, maintain a sober and a serious front, 
wearing upon them the look of men who are 
upborne and ir pired by a purpose to acquit 
themselves steadfastly and well. By the same 
process of reasoning I take it that the reader, 
conceding he or she has never been brought 
face to face with war, pictures men on the 
march in periods of comparative immunity from 
immediate peril as singing their way along, with 
jokes and catchwords flitting back and forth and 
a general holidaying air pervading the scene 
presented by the swinging column. Now my 
observation has been that the exact opposite is 
commonly the case. 

Men on the casual march, say, from one 
billeting place to another, are apt to push ahead 
stolidly and for the most part in silence. It is 
hard work, marching under heavy equipment 
is, and after a few hours of it the strongest 

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THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

individual in the ranks feels the pangs of weari- 
ness in his scissoring legs and along his burdened 
back. So he bends forward from the hips and 
he hunches his shoulders and wastes mighty 
little of his breath in idle persiflage. Only 
toward the end of the journey, when rest and 
food are in impending prospect, do his spirits 
revive to a point where he feels like singing 
and guying his mates. The thud-thud-thud 
of the feet upon the highroad, the grunted com- 
mands of the oflScers, and the occasional clatter 
of metal striking against metal as a man shifts 
his piece are likely to be the only accom- 
paniments of the hike for miles on end; and 
there isn't much music really in such sounds as 
these. 

But suppose the same men are moving into 
action and know whither they are bound. The 
preliminary nervousness that possesses every 
normally constituted man at the prospect of 
facing the deadliest forms of danger now moves 
these men to hide their true emotions under a 
masking of gaiety. This gaiety, which largely 
is assumed at the outset, presently becomes 
their real mood. Nine men out of ten who pass 
are indulging in quips and catches. Nine in 
ten are ready to laugh at trivialities that 
ordinarily would go unnoticed. One standing 
by to watch them must diagnose the average 
expression on the average face as betokening 
exultation rather than exaltation. The tenth 
man is quiet and of a thoughtful port. He is 
[ 314] 



WAR AS IT isn't 



forcing himself to appraise the situation before 
him in its right proportions, and so the infection 
that fills his comrades passes him by. Yet it is 
safe to bet on it that the sober one-tenth, in the 
high hour of the grapple, will contend with just 
as much gallantry as the nine-tenths can hope 
to show. 

Particularly is the mental slant that I have 
here sought to describe true in its applica- 
tion to raw troops who have yet to taste of 
close-up fighting. Seasoned veterans who have 
weathered the experience before now and who 
know what it means, and know, too, that they 
may count upon themselves and their fellows 
to acquit themselves valorously, are upborne 
by a certain all-pervading cheerfulness — perhaps 
as a rule confidence would be a better word than 
cheerfulness — but they are not quite so noisy, 
not quite so enthusiastic as the greener hands. 
At this moment they are not doing very much 
in the cheering line, though they will yell just 
as loudly as any when the order is to fix bay- 
onets and charge. 

Paradoxically the reaction upon men who 
have come whole out of the inferno of battling 
at close quarters affects these two compared 
classes of soldier-men differently — at least that 
has been my observation. The unseasoned 
men, to whom the hell from which they have 
just emerged has been for them a new kind of 
hell, are as likely as not almost downcast in 
their outward demeanour, irritable and peevish 

[315] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

in their language. For one thing, they are dog- 
tired; for another, I would say, a true apprecia- 
tion of the ordeal through which they have 
passed is now coming home to them; for still 
another, the shock of having seen their mates 
wiped out all about them surely affects the 
general consciousness of the survivors; and 
finally, as I appraise their sensations, the calm 
following the tumult and the struggle leaves 
them well-nigh numbed. Certainly it fre- 
quently leaves them inarticulate almost to 
dumbness. Give them twenty-four hours for 
rest and mental adjustment, and the coltishness 
of youth returns to them in ample measure, 
especially if there is a victory to their credit. 

On the contrasting hand, if you want to 
witness an exhibition of good cheer at the end 
of a day of fighting seek for it among the 
veterans. On a certain day in May when the 
second of the great German drives was in 
progress I chanced to be at a spot where a 
brigade of French infantry — a brigade with a 
magnificent record made earlier in the war — 
was thrown into action to reenforce a hard- 
pressed and decimated British command. Al- 
most without exception the little dusty, rusty 
poilus went to the fighting in a sort of matter- 
of-fact methodical silence more impressive to 
me than loud outbursts could possibly have 
been. Quietly, swiftly, without lost motion or 
vain exclamations, but moving all like men 
intent upon the performance of a difficult and an 
[316] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



unpleasant but a highly necessary task, they 
took up their guns, adjusted their packs of 
ammunition, set their helmets over their fore- 
heads, and walked with no undue haste but 
only with an assured and briskened serenity 
into the awfulness that was beyond the clouds 
of smoke and dust, just yonder. 

That same evening, by a streak of luck, I 
returned to approximately the same spot at the 
moment when those who were left of the 
Frenchmen prepared to bivouac on the edges 
of the same terrain where all the afternoon they 
had fought. With the help of some skeleton 
formations of British companies they had 
withstood the German onslaught; more than 
that, they had broken two advancing waves of 
the gray coats and finally had swept the ripped 
and riddled legions of the enemy back for a good 
mile, so that now they held the field as victors. 
Elsewhere along that fifty-mile front there might 
be a different story to tell, but here in this small 
corner of the great canvas of the mighty battle 
a localised success that was worth while had 
been achieved by these heroes. Under them 
now their legs quivered from stark weariness. 
Some were black like negroes; the stale sweat 
and the dried dirt and the powder grit had 
caked them over. Some were red like Indians, 
where the crusted blood from small uncon- 
sidered wounds dyed the skin on their faces 
and their hands. 

Now with the fog of fighting turning grey 
[317] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

upon their unwashed bodies they sprawled on 
the stained and trodden meadow grass along- 
side the road, looking, with their figures fore- 
shortened by lying, most absurdly like exceed- 
ingly dirty small boys who had been playing 
at soldiering. Yet spent and worn as they were 
they gibed us as we passed, and with uplifted 
canteens they toasted us — presumably in the 
thin Pinard; and they sang songs without 
number and they uttered spicy Gallic jokes at 
the expense of the mess cooks for their tardiness 
in making ready the supper stews. The job of 
the day was done with and ended; it was a fit 
time for being merry, and these little men were 
most exceedingly merry. 

Such was the excess of their jollifying that 
had one not known better one might have sus- 
pected that they had been drinking something 
stronger than the thin wine ration upon which no 
Frenchman ever gets drunk. I recall one stunted 
chap who reeled and staggered as he made his 
way toward our halted car to ask us for news 
from the eastward. He had stuck into the 
sooted muzzle of his rifle a sheaf of wild flowers; 
and reeling and rocking on his heels he sought 
to embrace us when we offered him cigarettes. 
He was tipsy all right; but not with liquor — with 
emotion; the sort of emotion that temporarily 
befuddles a fighting man who has fought well 
and who is glad to have finished fighting for 
the time being, at least. As we left him he was 
propped upon his short unsteady legs at the 

[318] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



roadside singing the song that your poilu always 
by preference sings when his mood inclines to 
the blithesome; he sang the Madelon. 

Right here, I think, is a good enough time 
for me to say that in these times the place to 
hear the Marseillaise hymn played or sung is 
not France but America. In America one 
hears it everywhere — the hand organs play it, 
the theatre orchestras play it, the military 
bands play it, pretty ladies sing it at patriotic 
concerts. In France in seven months I have 
heard it just twice — once in the outskirts of the 
great battle on March twenty-sixth, just out- 
side of Soissons, when a handful of French 
soldiers hurrying up to the fight were moved 
by some passing fancy, which we who heard 
them could not fathom, to chant a verse or 
two of the song; and again on Memorial Day, 
when an American band played it in a French 
burying ground at a coast town where the 
graves of three hundred of our own soldiers were 
decorated. 

It may be that the Frenchman has grown 
wearied of the sound of his national air, or it 
may be — and this, I think, is the proper explana- 
tion — that m this time of stress and suffering 
for his land the Marseillaise hymn has for him 
become a thing so high and so holy that he 
holds it for sacred moments, to be rendered 
then as the accompaniment for a sacrificial rite 
of the spirit and of the soul. At any rate it is 
true that except on the one occasion I have 
[319] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

just mentioned I have yet to hear the French 
soldier in the field sing the Marseillaise hymn. 
He much prefers his cheerful chansons, and 
when an American band plays for him it is a 
jazz tune that most surely may be counted 
upon to make him cry "Encore!" 

As illustrative of the difference in tempera- 
ment between the veteran and the beginner at 
war I should like to describe what many times 
I have witnessed as an incident in the streets 
of Paris. All through the past spring and the 
early part of the summer the members of the 
class of 1919 were holding celebrations in com- 
memoration of the fact that they were about to 
be called to the service. Their emblematic 
colour for this year is red, and their chosen flower 
is the poppy, so the youngsters call themselves 
Coquelicots, which is the French name for 
the crimson wild poppy that grows everywhere 
in France. The class of 1918, who went out 
last year, were Paquerettes — white daisies; 
and those of 1917 were Bluets, or cornflowers. 
Every three years the fancy repeats itself in 
the same sequence and the same cycle, so that 
the trinity of the national colours may be pre- 
served. 

Almost any hour, day or night, one might 
see troops of those about to be mobilised — 
schoolboys of eighteen, apprentice lads, peasant 
youths, cadets of military academies — parading 
the avenues. They wore all manner of fantastic 
garbings, with enormous red neckties and red 
[320] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



sashes, and battered high hats banded with 
red, and with poppies stuck in their button- 
holes or festooned in garlands about their necks. 
And always they were singing and skylarking, 
marching with fantastic jig steps in grotesque 
queue formations, and playing pranks upon 
the pedestrians who got in their way. The 
sight made an American think of college fra- 
ternities conducting outdoor initiations. The 
scene gave colour and the sparkle of youthful 
exuberance to a city where the sad sights are 
commoner than the happy ones. 

It was inevitable that in every few rods of 
their progress the youngsters would encounter 
soldiers on leave, and then the boys, dropping 
for a moment their joyousness, would gravely 
salute the veterans, and the veterans as gravely 
would return the salute. Then the roisterers 
would whirl off down the sidewalk waving their 
exaggerated walking sticks and kicking up 
their heels as is the way with youth the world 
over, and the soldiers in their stained patched 
tunics, and their worn leather housings, and 
with their worn resolute faces — how often I have 
seen this little byplay repeated! — would ex- 
change swift expressive glances with one another 
and smile meaning, sad little smiles, and shake 
their heads in a sort of passive resignation to 
the inevitable, before they went trudging on in 
their heavy, run-down, shabby boots. They 
knew — these war-worn elders did — what the 
chosen man children of the generation just 
([ 321 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

emerging from the first stages of its adolescence 
would very shortly be called upon to face; 
and so they shook their heads in silent but 
regretful affirmation of the certain prospect of 
an added burden of woefulness and suffering for 
the flowered youth of their stricken land. For 
these men who had trod the paths of glory that 
are so flinty and so hard could understand what 
must lie ahead so much better than those 
stripling lads to whom the road to war was as 
yet a shining and a golden highway! 

Have you ever seen at the movies a film 
purporting to show an actual scene in the 
trenches under hostile fire, wherein the men on 
guard there all faced, with squinted eyes and 
scowling brows, across the parapets, fingering 
their weapons nervously, and rarely or never 
glanced toward the camera, but seemingly were 
so absorbed in their ambi|;ions to pot the f oeman 
across the way they had no thought for any- 
thing except the tragic undertaking in hand? 
Then again, have you ever seen another so- 
called war reel with a similar setting, which 
brought before you the figures of soldiers who 
from behind the shelter of the piled-up sand- 
bags grinned self-consciously in the direction of 
the machine that was recording their forms and 
their movements for back-home consumption, 
and who between intervals of loading and firing 
deported themselves pretty much as any group 
of sheepishly pleased young men might while 
under the eye of a photographing machine and 

[ 322 ] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



who for the moment appeared to be more in- 
spired by a perfectly normal human impulse 
to show off than by any other thought? 

Now I have seen both these varieties of 
pictures and assuming that the reader has, 
too, I put to him or her this question : Granting 
that one of these films was the genuine article, 
namely, a view of a section of a front-line 
trench taken at risk of the operator's life; and 
that the other was a manufactured thing, with 
carefully rehearsed supers made up as soldiers 
posing in obedience to a hired director's orders, 
which one, in the reader's opinion, was the 
authentic thing and which the bogus? 

If I have figured the probable answer aright 
the probable answer is wrong. The picture in 
which the soldiers behaved in conformity with 
the average civilian's notion of the way a soldier 
does behave under fire — to wit, by being all 
intent upon the job of shooting, with no regard 
for any lesser diversions — was the imitation; 
and the film in which you saw the soldiers 
crowding forward in the narrow trench way in 
order to be sure of getting into the focus area — 
the one where you saw the soldiers grinning 
toward you and winking and nudging their 
fellows and generally behaving like curious and 
embarrassed children — well, that was the gen- 
uine article. 

For the fact of the matter is that once the 
novelty of his new environment has worn off — 
and it does wear off with marvellous speed — 

[ 323 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

the soldier in the front-line trench carries on 
after identically the same patterns that would 
govern him under ordinary circumstances. 
The detail that he is in a place of imminent 
danger becomes to him of secondary importance. 
Except for the chance that any moment he may 
stop a bullet his mode of habit resolves itself 
back to its familiar elements. He is bored or 
he is interested by exactly the same things that 
would bore him or excite him anywhere else. 
To him the shooting back and forth across the 
top very soon becomes a more or less tedious 
part of the daily routine of the trench life, but 
the intrusion into his corner of a moving-picture 
man with a camera is a novelty, an event very 
much out of the ordinary; therefore he pays 
much more attention to the taking of the 
picture than to what goes on pretty steadily 
during practically all of his waking hours. 

For added qualities of seeming indifference 
to externals in the midst of great and stirring 
exertions, see the artillerymen who serve with 
the heavies. Generally things are fairly lively 
among those dainty, darling, death-dealing pets 
that are called the 75 's. Under their camou- 
flaging they look like speckled pups when they 
do not look like spotted circus ponies. It is a 
brisksome and a heartening thing to see how 
fast a crew of Frenchmen can serve a battery of 
these little pintos, feeding the three-inch shells 
into the pieces with such celerity that at a dis- 
tance the reports merge together so one might 

[ 324 ] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



almost imagine he heard the voice of an over- 
grown machine gun speaking, instead of the 
intermingled voices of five separate trouble 
makers. Near Compiegne one day I watched 
a battery of 75's at work on the Germans 
advancing in mass formation, I keeping count 
of the reports; and the average number of 
shots per minute per gun was twelve. 

But the heavies work more slowly, and their 
crews have a sluggish look about them as 
befitting men who do their fighting all at long 
range and never see the foe; though I suspect 
the underlying reason to be that they have 
learned to combine the maximum of eflSciency 
and of accuracy with the minimum of apparent 
effort and the minimum of apparent enthu- 
siasm. Particularly is this to be said in cases 
where the gunners have become expert through 
long practice. 

On the Montdidier Front on a gloriously 
beautiful afternoon of early summer I kept 
company for two hours with three French 
batteries of 155's. The guns were ranged in 
dirt emplacements under a bank alongside a 
sunken road that meandered out from the 
main street of a village that was empty except 
for American and French soldiers. The Ger- 
mans were four miles away, beyond a ridge of 
low hills. By climbing to the crest of the 
nearermost rise and lying there in the rank 
grass and looking through glasses one could 
make out the German lines. Without glasses 

[ 325 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

one could mark fairly well where the shells 
from our side fell. But during the time I stayed 
there no single man among the artillerymen 
manifested any desire whatsoever to ascertain 
the visible effects of his handiwork. 

Over the ground telephone an order would 
come from somewhere or other, miles away. 
The officer in command of one of the batteries 
would sing out the order to fire so many rounds 
at such and such intervals. The angles — the 
deflections for charge temperature, air tempera- 
ture, barometer pressure and wind— had" all 
been worked out earlier in the day, and a few 
corrections for range were required. So all 
the men had to do was to fire the guns. And 
that literally was all that they did do. 

Not all the explosions in that immediate 
vicinity were caused by "departs," either. 
Occasionally there were to be heard the un- 
mistakable whistle and roar and the ultimate 
crack of an "arrive," for the Germans' counter- 
batteries did not remain silent under the 
punishment the French were dealing out. But 
when an arrive fell anywhere within eye range 
the men barely turned their heads to see the 
column of earth and dust and pulverised chalk- 
rock go geysering up into the air. It was only 
by chance I found out an enemy shell had fallen 
that morning among a gun crew stationed near 
the westerly end of the line of guns, perhaps a 
quarter of a mile away, and had blown seven 
men to bits and wounded as many more. 

[326] 



WAR AS IT ISN T 



Still, this apathy with regard to the potential 
consequences of being where an arrive bursts is 
not confined to the gunners. When one has 
had opportunity to see how many shells fall 
without doing any damage to human beings, 
and to figure out for oneself how many tons 
of metal it takes to kill a man, one likewise 
acquires a measure of this same apparent non- 
chalance. 

For sheer sang-froid it would be hard to 
match those whose work I watched that day. 
In 'intervals of activity they lounged under 
the gun wheels, smoking and playing card 
games; and when one battery was playing 
and another temporarily was silent the members 
of the idle battery paid absolutely no heed to 
the work of their fellows. 

In two hours just one thing and only one 
thing occurred to jostle them out of their calm. 
Something mysterious and very grievous befell 
a half-grown dog, which, having been aban- 
doned or forgotten by his owners, still lived 
on in the ruins of the town and foraged for 
scraps among the mess kitchens. Down the 
road past the guns came the pup, ki-yiing his 
troubles as he ran; and at the sound of his 
poignant yelps some of the gunners quit their 
posts and ran out into the road, and one of 
them gathered up the poor beastie in his arms 
and a dozen more clustered about offering the 
consolation of pats and soothing words to the 
afflicted thing. Presently under this treat- 
[327] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

ment lie forgot what ailed him, and then the 
men went back to their places, discussing the 
affair with many gestures and copious speech. 
Ten German shells plumping down near by 
would not have created half so much excite- 
ment as the woes of one ownerless doggie had 
created. I said to myself that if the incident 
was typically French, likewise it was typical of 
what might be called the war temperament as 
exemplified among veteran fighters. 

I should add, merely to fill out the settings 
of the scene, that scarcely was there a ten- 
minute interlude this day in which German 
observation planes did not scout over our lines 
or French observation planes did not scout 
over theirs. Sometimes only a single plane 
would be visible, but more often the airmen 
moved in squadron formations. Each time 
of course that a plane ventured aloft its coursing 
flight across the heavens would be marked by 
bursting pompons of downy white or black 
smoke — white for shrapnel and black for 
explosive bursts — where the antiaircraft guns 
of one side or the other took wing shots at the 
pesky intruder. One time six sky voyagers were 
up simultaneously. Another time ten, and 
still another no less than sixteen might be 
counted at once. But to focus the attention 
of any of the persons then upon the earth 
below, an aerial combat between the two 
groups would have been required, and even 
this spectacle — which at the first time of wit- 
[S28] 



WAR AS IT isn't 



nessing it is almost the most stirring isolated 
event that military operations have to offer — 
very soon, with daily repetitions, becomes al- 
most commonplace, as I myself can testify. 
War itself is too big a thing for one detached 
detail of it to count in the estimates that one 
tries to form of the whole thing. It takes a 
charge in force over the top or something 
equally vivid and spectacular to whet up the 
jaded mentality of the onlooker. 



[329] 



CHAPTER XX 
THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

SEEKING for the thrills that experience 
had taught me would nevertheless prob- 
ably not be forthcoming anywhere in 
this so-called quiet sector, I went that 
same day with a young American oflScer to a 
forward post of command, which was another 
name for a screened pit dug in the scalp of a 
fair-sized hillock, immediately behind our fore- 
most rifle pits. Sitting here upon the tops of 
our steel helmets, which the same make fairly 
good perches to sit on when the ground is 
muddied, we could look through periscope 
glasses right into the courtyard of a wrecked 
chateau held by the enemy. Upon this spot 
some of the guns behind us were playing indus- 
triously. We could see where the shells struck 
— now in the garden, now near the shattered 
outbuildings, now ripping away a slice of the 
front walls or a segment of the roof of the 
chateau itself; and we could see too, after the 
dust of each hit had somewhat lifted, the small 
gray figures of Germans scurrying about like 
startled ants. 

[ 330 ] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

A mile away, about, were those Germans, 
and yet to all intents and purposes they might 
have been twenty miles away; for as things 
stood, and with the forces that they had at this 
point, it would have taken them days or per- 
haps weeks to bridge the gap between their 
lines and ours, and it would have taken us as 
long to get to where they were. For you see 
both forces had abundance of artillery, but 
each was holding its front lines with small 
groups of infantry. To sit there and peer into 
their defences was like looking into a distant 
planet peopled by men thinking different 
thoughts from ours, and swayed by different 
ambitions and moved by impulses all running 
counter to those of our breed. 

Nevertheless, I must confess that the sensa- 
tion of crouching in that hole in the ground, 
spying upon the movements of those dwellers 
of that other small world, while high above us 
the shells passed over, shrieking their war- 
whoops as they travelled from or toward our 
back lines, very soon lost for me the savour 
of interest, just as it had lost it a month before 
when I did the same thing in front of Noyon, 
or two weeks before near Verdun, or as after- 
ward it was to do when I repeated the experience 
near Rheims. 

So after a bit my companion and I fell to 

enjoying the beauties of the day. In front 

of us lay a strip of gentle pasture slope not 

badly marred by shell craters, and all green 

[ 331 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

except where lovely wide slashes of a bright 
yellow flower cut across it like rifts of fallen 
sunshine. The lower reaches of air were filled 
with the humming of bees, and every minute 
the skylarks went singing up into the soft 
skies as though filled with a curiosity to find 
out what those wailing demons that sped criss- 
crossing through the heavens might be. 
Presently from a thicket behind us sounded 
a bell-like bird note with a sort of melodious 
cluck in it. I had never heard that note 
before except when uttered by wooden clocks 
of presumably Swiss manufacture, but I recog- 
nised it for what it was. 

"Listen," said my companion: *' that's the 
second time within a week I've heard it. A 
French liaison officer was with me then, and 
he said that for three years now the cuckoo 
had been silent, and he said that the French 
country people believed that since the cuckoo 
had begun calling again it was a sign the war 
would soon be over — that the cuckoo was 
calling for peace on earth." 

"I wonder if he was right," I said. 

"Well, he was right so far as he personally 
was concerned. This war for him was nearly 
over. Night before last he was riding back to 
division headquarters in a side car, and a shell 
dropped on him at a crossroads and he and 
the driver were killed." 

We sat a minute or two longer and nothing 
was said. 

[ 332 ] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

"Well," he said at length, "if you've had 
enough of this we'll be getting back. It 
isn't very much of a show, once a fellow gets 
used to it, and I guess the major will have 
supper ready for us pretty soon. Ready to 
go?" 

We got up cautiously and put our helmets 
on the proper ends of us and started back 
through the shallow communication trench 
leading to the village. 

"Being where you can look right across and 
down into the German lines makes a fellow 
wonder," I suggested. "It makes a fellow 
wonder what those men over yonder are 
thinking about and what their feelings toward 
us are, and whether they hate us as deeply as 
they hate the British. " 

"I guess I can figure out what one of them 
thinks anyhow," he said with a quizzical side- 
wise glance at me. He flirted over his shoulder 
with his thumb. "I've got a brother some- 
where over yonder ways — if he's alive." He 
smiled at the look that must have come across 
my face. "Oh, you needn't suspect me," he 
went on. "I judge I'm as good an American 
as you are or any man alive is, even if I 
do wear a German name. You see I'm a 
youngest son. I was born in the good old 
U. S. A. all right enough, but two of my 
brothers, older than I am, were born in Ger- 
many, and they didn't come to America when 
the rest of the family migrated. And one of 
[333] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

them, last time I heard from him before we 
got into the mess, was a lieutenant in a Bavar- 
ian field battery. Being a German subject I 
suppose he figures he's only doing his duty, but 
how he can go on fighting for that swine of a 
Kaiser beats me. But then, I don't suppose I 
can understand; I'm an American citizen. 
Funny world, isn't it.'' 

*'Say, listen! That cuckoo is calling again. 
I wonder if there is anything in the superstition 
of the French peasants that peace will come this 
year. Well, so far as I am concerned I don't 
want it to come until Uncle Sam has finished up 
this job in the right way. I only hope the next 
time I hear the cuckoo sing it'll be in the out- 
skirts of Berlin — that is, providing a cuckoo can 
stand for the outskirts of Berlin." 

I reminded him that the cuckoo was a bird 
that stole other bird's nests — or tried to. 

"That being so, I guess Berlin must be full 
of 'em," said he. 

The major's headquarters — he was a major 
of artillery — was in the chief house of the little 
town. Curiously enough this was almost the 
only house in the town that had not been hit, 
and two days later it was hit, and in the ruins 
of it a friend of mine, another major, was 
crushed; but that is a different story, not to be 
detailed here. It stood — the house, I mean — 
in a little square courtyard of its own, as most 
village houses in this part of France do, being 
fianked on one side by its stable and on the 
[334] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

other side by its cow barn and by its chicken 
houses. There was a high wall to inclose it 
along the side nearest the street, with rabbit 
hutches and pigeon cots tucked up under the 
walL In the centre of the court was a midden 
for manure. It had been a cosy little place 
once. The dwelling was of red brick with a 
gay tiled roof, and the lesser buildings and 
the wall were built of stones, as is the French 
way. Even the rabbit hutches were stone, and 
the dovecot and the cuddy for the fowls. Now, 
except for American artillerymen, it was all 
empty of life. The paved yard was littered 
with wreckage; the doors of the empty cubicles 
stood open. 

I sat with the major and his adjutant on 
the doorstep of the cottage waiting for the 
orderlies to call us in to eat our suppers. 
Through the lolled gate in the wall an old man, 
a civilian, entered. He was tall and lean like 
one of the lombard trees growing in the spoiled 
i vegetable garden at the back of the house, and 
he was dressed in a long frock coat that was all 
powdered with a white dust of the roads. He 
had a grave long face, and we saw that he 
limped a little as he came across the close 
toward us. Nearing us he took off his hat and 
bowed. 

"Pardon, 'sieurs, " he said in Norman French, 
"but could I look through this house?" 

"No civilians are permitted here now," said 
the major. "How did you get here?" 
I S35 I 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

"I was given a pass to return," he explained. 
"Your pardon again, m'sieurs, but I am — I 
was — the mayor of this town, and this is my 
house. I mean, it was my house. The Ger- 
mans came upon us so rapidly we had to leave 
on but two hours' notice, taking with us very 
little. Not until to-day could I secure leave 
to come back. I wished to see what was left 
of my home — I always had lived here before, 
you know — and to gather up some of my be- 
longings, if I might. " 

" Where did you come from ? " asked the major. 

"From ." He named a town twenty- 
two miles away. 

"And how did you get here?'* 

"I walked." He lifted his shoulders in an 
expressive gesture. "There was no other way. 
And I must walk back to-night. There is no 
shelter nearer except for soldiers." 

He looked past us into the main room of 
the house. Its floor of tiles was littered with 
dried mud. A table and three broken chairs 
that had given way beneath the weight of heavy 
and careless men were its only furniture now. 
The window panes had been shattered. It was 
hard to picture that this once had been a cozy, 
comfortable room, clean and tidy, smartened 
with pictures and ornaments upon the walls 
and with curtains at the casement openings, 
which now gaped so emptily. 

"Not much is left, eh?" said the old man, 
his face twitching. "Well c'est la guerre!" 
I 336 ] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

*'I'm afraid your home is rather badly 
wrecked," said the major. "Since I came here 
my men have tried to do no more damage to it 
than they could help, but Algerians were here 
before us; and the Algerians, as you know, are 
rough in their habits and sometimes they loot 
houses. Do you wish to enter.f* If so, go ahead. 
And if you are hungry I would be glad to have 
you stay and eat with us. '* 

The stranger hesitated a moment. 

"No, no," he said; "of what use to go in.'' 
I have seen enough. And thank you, m'sieur 
but I do not wish any food." 

He bowed once more and turned away from 
us; but he did not go away directly. He went 
across the court to his barn and tugged at a 
door that was half ajar. From within came 
the grumbled protest of a Yankee gunner 
lying just inside on a pile of straw, and indignant 
at being roused from a nap. 

The man who owned the barn backed away, 
making his apologies. He picked up a hay 
fork that lay upon the dungpile, and near the 
gate, under the shadow of the wall, he stooped 
again and picked up a broken clock that some 
one had tossed out of the house. Then, after 
one more glance all about the place as though 
he strove to fix in his mind a picture of it, not 
as now it was but as once it had been, he 
stepped through the gate, and with his pitiable 
salvage tucked under his bony arms he vanished 
up the road. 

[337] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

When that night I summed up my experiences 
the memories of the day that stood out clearest 
in my mind were not of the guns nor the 
aeroplanes nor the bursting shells nor yet the 
sight in the German lines, but of the mistreated 
dog that howled and of the cuckoo that fluted 
in the thicket and of the old man who had 
trudged so far, over perilous roads, to look 
with his eyes for the last time, surely, upon the 
sorry ruination of his home. And I felt that I, 
a man whose business it is to see interesting 
things and afterward to put them down in 
black and white, was acquiring in some degree 
the perspective of the soldier, whose mental 
viewpoint is so foreshortened by the imminent 
presence of the greater phases of war that he 
comes after a while to regard the inconse- 
quential, and so looks on the incidental phases 
of it as of more account than the complexities 
of its vast, hurrying, overdriven mechanism. 

For the point I have been trying, perhaps 
clumsily, to make clear all along is just this: 
As a general thing it may be set down that 
except for those infrequent occasions when 
there is a charge to be made or a charge to be 
repelled, or except when some freak of war, 
new to the trooper's experience, is occurring 
or has just occurred, he in all essential outer 
regards is exactly the same person that he was 
before he went a-soldiering, with nothing about 
him to distinguish him from what he was then, 
barring the fact that now he wears a uniform. 

[ 338] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

Spiritually he may have been transformed; 
indeed he must have been, but it is a shading 
of spirituality that but rarely betrays itself in 
his fashion of speech or in his physical expres- 
sion or in his behaviour. Doing the most 
heroic things he nevertheless does them with- 
out indulging in any of the heroics with which 
the fiction of books and the fiction of stagecraft 
love to invest the display of the finer and the 
higher emotions of mankind. 

Living where death in various guises is ever 
upon the stalk for him he learns to regard it 
no more than in civil life he regards the com- 
moner manifestations of a code of civilised 
procedure that ethically is based upon a plan 
to safeguard his life and his limb from mis- 
chance and ill health. The habit of death 
becomes to him as commonplace as the habit 
of life once was. He gets used to the in- 
credible and it turns commonplace. He gets 
used to the extraordinary, which after it has 
happened a few times becomes most ordinary. 
He gets used to being bombed and is bored 
thereby; gets used to gas alarms and bombard- 
ments; to high explosives, spewing shrapnel, and 
purring bullets; gets used to eating his meals 
standing up and taking his rest in broken bits. 
He gets used to all of war's programme — its im- 
possibilities and its contradictions, its splendours, 
its horrors and its miseries. In short he gets 
used to living in a world that is turned entirely 
upside down, with every normal aspect in it 

[339] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

capsised and every regular and ordained T)hase 
of it standing upon its head. 

For a fact it seems to me that in its final 
analysis the essence of war is merely the knack 
of getting used to war. And the instantaneous 
response of the average human being to its 
monstrous and preposterous aspects is a lesson 
to prove the elasticity and the infinite adapt- 
abihty of the human mind. Because people 
can and do get used to it is the reason why 
they do not all go mad in the midst of it. 
Getting used to it — that's the answer. After a 
while one even gets used to the phenomenon 
that war rarely or never looks as you would 
think war should look — and that brings me by a 
roundabout way back again to the main text 
of my article. 

Troops travelling in numbers across country 
do not present the majestic panoramic effect 
that one might expect. This in part, though, 
is due to the common topography of France. 
Generally speaking, a given district is so cut up 
with roads threading the fields that the forces, 
for convenience in handling, are divided into 
short columns that move by routes that are 
practically parallel, toward a common desti- 
nation. The sight of troops going into camp at 
night also is disappointing. In France, thickly 
settled as it is, with villages tucked into every 
convenient dip between the hills, the men are 
so rapidly swallowed up in the billeting spaces 
imder house and barn roots that an hour or 

[340] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

even half an hour after the march has ended 
you might traverse a district where, let us say, 
twenty thousand soldiers are quartered, and 
unless you know the correct figures the evidence 
offered to your eyes might deceive you into 
assuming that not one-tenth of that number 
were anywhere in the vicinity. 

It is this failure of war, when considered as a 
physical thing, to measure up to its traditional 
impressiveness, that fills with despair the soul of 
the writing man, who craves to put down on 
paper an adequate conception of it in its 
entirety. Finally he comes to this: That 
either he must throw away the delusions he 
himself nourished and ' content himself by 
building together little mosaics with scraps 
gleaned from the big, untellable, untrans- 
latable enigma that it is, or for the reader's 
sake must try to conjure up a counterfeit con- 
ception, which will correspond with what he 
knows the average reader's mental vision of 
the thing to be. In one event he is honest — but 
disappointing. In the other he is guilty of a 
willful deceit, but probably turns out copy 
that is satisfying to his audience. In either 
event, in his heart he is bound to realise the 
utter impossibility of depicting war as it is. 

It is one of the cumulating paradoxes of 
the entire paradoxical procedure that the best 
place to get treasonably clear and intelligible 
idea of the swing and scope of a battle is not 
upon the site of the battle itself, but in a 

[ 341 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

place anywhere from ten to twenty miles behind 
the battle. Directly at the front the onlooker 
observes only those small segments of the 
prevalent hostilities that lie directly under his 
eyes. He is hedged in and hampered by 
obstacles; his vision is circumscribed and con- 
fined to what may be presented in his immediate 
vicinity. 

Of course there are exceptions to this rule. 
I am speaking not of every case but of the 
average case. 

A fairish distance back, though, he may to an 
extent grasp the immensity of the operation. 
He sees the hammered troops coming out and 
the fresh troops going in; beholds the move- 
ments of munitions and supplies and reserves; 
observes the handling of the wounded; notes 
the provisions that are made for a possible 
advance and the preparations that have been 
made for a possible retreat. Even so, to the 
uninitiated eye the scheme appears jumbled, 
haphazard and altogether confused. It re- 
quires a mind acquainted with more than the 
rudiments of military science to discern pur- 
pose in what primarily appears to be so abso- 
lutely purposeless. There is nothing of the 
checkerboard about it; the orderliness of a 
chess game is lacking. The suggestion is more 
that of a whirlpool. So it follows that the 
novice watches only the maelstrom on the 
surface and rarely can he fathom out the 
guiding influences that ordain that each twisti- 

[ 342 ] 



THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO 

wise current moves in its proper channel without 
impairment or impediment for any one of the 
myriad of related activities. 

Being a novice he is astonished to note that 
only infrequently do wounded men act as his 
fictional reading has led him to believe they 
would act. To me the most astounding thing 
about this has been not that wounded men 
shriek and moan, but that nearly always they 
are so terribly silent. At the moment of 
receiving his hurt a man may cry out; often he 
does. But oftener than not he comes, mute 
and composed, to the dressing station. The 
example of certain men who lock their lips and 
refuse to murmur, no matter how great is their 
pain, inspires the rest to do likewise. A man 
who in civil life would make a great pother 
over a trivial mishap, in service will endure an 
infinitely worse one without complaint. If war 
brings out all the vices in some nations it most 
surely brings out the virtues in others. I 
hate to think back on the number of freshly 
wounded men I have seen, but when I do 
think back on it I am struck by the fact that 
barring a few who were delirious and some few 
more who were just emerging into agonised 
consciousness following the coma shock of a 
bad injury, I can count upon the fingers of my 
two hands the total of those who screamed or 
loudly groaned. Men well along the road to 
recovery frequently make more troublesome 
patients than those who have just been brought 
[ 343 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

to the field hospitals; and a man who perhaps 
has lain for hours with a great hole in his 
flesh, stoically awaiting his turn under the 
surgeon's hands, will sometimes, as a con- 
valescent, worry and fret over the prospect of 
having his hurts redressed. 

Among certain races the newly stricken 
trooper is more apt to be concerned by the 
fear that he may be incapacitated from getting 
back into the game than he is about the extent 
of his wound or the possibility that he may die 
of it. As an American I am proud to be able 
to say, speaking as a first-hand witness, that 
our own race should be notably included in this 
category. The Irishman who had been shot 
five times but was morally certain he would 
recover and return to the war because he 
thought he knew the fellow who had plugged 
him has his counterpart without number among 
the valorous lads from this side of the ocean 
whose names have appeared on the casualty 
lists. 



CHAPTER XXI 
PARADOXES BEHIND THE LINES 



WHILE I am on the subject of 
unusual phases of modern warfare 
I should like to include just one 
more thing in the list — and that 
thing is the suddenness with which in France, 
and likewise in Belgium, one in going forward 
passes out of an area of peacefulness into an 
area of devastation and destruction. Almost 
invariably the transition is accomplished with 
a startling abruptness. It is as though a 
mighty finger had scored a line across the face 
of the land and said: "On this side of the line 
life shall go on as it always has gone on. Here 
men shall plough, and women shall weave, and 
children shall play, and the ordinary affairs 
of mankind shall progress with the seasons. 
On that side there shall be only death and the 
proofs of death and the promises of yet more 
deaths. There the fields shall be given over 
to the raven and the rat; the homes shall be 
blasted flat, the towns shall be razed and 
the earth shall be made a charnelhouse and a 
[345] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

lazar pit of all that is foul and loathsome and 
abominable in the sight of God and man. " 

For emphasis of this sharp contrast you 
have only to take a motor run up out of a 
district as yet untouched by war into the 
scathed zone of past or present combat. By 
preference I should elect for you that the 
trip be made through a British sector, because 
the British have a way of stamping their racial 
individuality upon an area that they take over — 
they Anglicise it, so to speak. Besides, a 
tour through British-held territory partakes of 
the nature of a flying visit to an ethnological 
congress, seeing that nearly all the peoples who 
make up the empire are likely to have represen- 
tatives here present, engaged in one capacity 
or another — and that adds interest and colour 
to the picture. 

Let us start, say, from a French market 
town on a market day. From far away in the 
north, as we climb into our car with our soldier 
driver and our officer escort, comes the faint 
hollow rumble of the great guns; but that has 
been going on nearly four years now, and in the 
monotony of it the people who live here have 
forgotten the threat that is in that distant 
thundering. Pippin-cheeked women are driving 
in, perched upon the high seats of two-wheeled 
hooded carts and bringing with them fowls 
and garden truck. In the square before the 
church booths are being set up for the sale of 
goods. Plump round-eyed children stand to 
[ 346 ] 



PARADOXES BEHIND THE LINES 

watch us go down the narrow street, which 
runs between close rows of wattled, gable-ended 
stone or plaster cottages. Most of the little 
girls are minding babies; practically all of 
the little boys wear black pinafores belted in 
at their chubby waistlines, with soldier cap — 
always soldier caps — on their heads, and they 
love to stiffen to attention and salute the 
occupants of a military automobile. 

There are but few men in sight, and these 
are old men or else they wear uniforms. The 
houses are tidied and neat; the soil, every 
tillable inch of it, is in a state of intensive and 
painstaking cultivation. On all hands vine- 
yards, orchards, pastures and grain fields are 
spread in squares and parallelograms. The 
road is bordered on either side by tall fine trees. 
Chickens, geese and turkeys scuttle away to 
safety from before the onrushing car, and at 
the roadside goats and cattle and sheep and 
sometimes swine are feeding. Each animal or 
each group of animals has its attendant herder. 
Horses are tethered outside the hedges where 
they may crop the free herbage. The land- 
scape is fecund with life and productivity. 

It is a splendid road along which we course, 
wide and smooth and well-kept, and for this 
the reason is presently made plain. Steam 
rollers of British manufacture, with soldiers 
to steer them, constantly roll back and forth 
over stretches where broken stone has been 
spread by the repair gangs. These mending 
[347] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

crews may be made up of soldiers — French, 
Britisli, Portuguese or Italians; and then again 
they may be drafts of German prisoners or 
members of labour squads drawn from far 
corners of the world where the British or the 
French flag flies. Within an hour you will 
pass turbaned East Indians, Chinamen, Arabs, 
Nubians, Ceylonese, Senegalese, Maoris, Afri- 
dis, Moroccans, Algerians. Their head-dresses 
are likely to be their own; for the rest they 
wear the uniforms of the nation that has en- 
listed or hired them. 

Despite this polyglot commingling of types 
the British influence is upon everything. 
Military guideposts bearing explicit directions 
in English stand thick along the wayside, and 
in the windows of the shops are cruder signs to 
show that the French proprietors make a 
specialty of catering to the wants of Britishers. 
Here is one reading "Eggs and Potato Chips"; 
there one advertising to whom it may con- 
cern, "Washing Done Here." "Post-cards 
and Souvenirs" is a common legend, and on 
the fronts of old wine-shops a still commoner 
one is "Ale and Stout." Rows of beer bottles 
stand upon the window ledges, with platters of 
buns and sandwiches flanking them. A "Wet 
and Dry Canteen" flies a diminutive British 
flag from its peaky roof. 

Evidences of British military activity multi- 
ply and re-multiply themselves. Long trains 
of motor-trucks lumber by like great, grey 

[ 348 ] 



PARADOXES BEHIND THE LINES 

elephants each with a dusty Tommy for its 
mahout. A convoy of small, new tanks go 
wallowing and bumping along bound front- 
ward, and they suggest a herd of behemoths 
on the move. Their drivers as likely as not 
are Chinamen who presently will turn their 
unwieldy charges over to soldier-crews. Officers 
clatter past on horse-back looking, all of them, 
as though they had just escaped from the 
military outfitters; staff-cars whiz through the 
slower traffic; troops bound for the baths or 
for the trenches or for rest billets march stolidly 
up the road or down it as the case may be. 
Omnibuses from Londontown, now converted 
to military usage, are thick in the press. 
Military policemen are more numerous and 
more set upon scrutinising your pass than they 
were a few miles back. And civilians are 
fewer. 

Alongside the highway, settlements of wooden 
or iron huts increase in number and in propor- 
tions. Hospitals, headquarters of various units, 
bath-houses, punishment compounds, motor 
stations, supply depots, airdromes, ordnance 
repair plants, munition warehouses, Y. M. C. A. 
huts, gas test stations, rest barracks, gasoline 
depots and all the rest of it show themselves 
for what they are both by their shapes and 
by the notice boards which mark them. Here 
is cluttered all the infinitely complicated 
machinery of the war-making industry, with 
its accessories and its adjuncts, its essentials 
[ 349 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

and its incidentals, but so far there is no 
actual evidence that the rude and disturbing 
hand of war has actually been laid upon the 
land. Rather is it a spectacle to make you 
think of a thousand circus days rolled into one, 
and mixed in with all this, travelling caravans, 
gypsy encampments. Wild West shows, horse- 
fairs, street carnivals and what not. 

Of a sudden the picture changes. There ai^e 
no civilians visible now, no prisoners and no 
labour-battalions but only soldiers and not so 
many soldiers either as you encountered just 
behind you in the intermediate zone because as a 
general thing, the nearer you come to the actual 
theatre of hostilities, the fewer soldiers in mass 
are you apt to see. The soldiers may be near by 
but they are not to be found until you search 
for them. They have taken cover in dug-outs 
and in trenches and in remote billets hidden 
in handy, sheltered spots in the conformation 
of the rolling landscape. 

Now the vista stretching before you wears a 
bleak and untenanted look. You notice that 
the shade trees have disappeared. Instead of 
living trees there are only jagged stumps of 
trees or bare, shattered trunks from which the 
limbs have been sheared away by shell-fire, 
and to which the bark clings in scrofulous 
patches. Across the fields go winding, brown 
bramble-patches of rusted barbed wire. The 
earth is depressed into hollows and craters, or 
up thrown into ugly mounds and hillocks. In 
[ 350 ] 



PARADOXES BEHIND THE LINES 

the wasted and disfigured meadows rank weeds 
sprout upon the edges of the ragged shellholes. 
The very earth seems to give off a sour and 
rancid stink. There is a village ahead of you, 
but it is a village without roofs to its houses, or 
dwellers within its breached and tottering 
walls. It is a jumbled nightmare of a ruin. 
It is as though a tornado had blown a cluster 
of brick-kilns flat, and then an earthquake had 
come along and jumbled the fragments into 
still greater and more utter confusion. 

Protruding from the flattened rubble about it, 
there uprears a crooked, spindle-like pinnacle 
of tottering masonry. It may have been a 
corner of the church wall or the town hall. 
Now it is like a beckoning finger calling to 
heaven for vengeance. Upon it is set a notice- 
board to advise you that you are now in the 
"Alert Zone," which means your gas-respirator 
must be snuggled up under your chin ready for 
use and that your steel helmet must be worn 
upon your head and that you must take such 
other precautions as may be required. 

You ride on then at reduced speed along a 
camouflaged byway for perhaps fifteen minutes. 
You come to where once upon a time, before 
the jack-booted, spike-headed apostles of Kul- 
tur descended upon this country, was another 
village standing. This village has been more 
completely obliterated out of its former image — 
if such a thing is possible — than its neighbour. 
It is little else than a red smear in the greyish 
[351] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

yellow desolation, where constant bombard- 
ment has reduced the bricks of its houses to a 
powder and then has churned and pestled the 
powder into the harried earth. There remains 
for proof of one-time occupancy only the 
jagged lines of certain foundations and ugly 
mounds of mingled soil and debris. Up from 
beneath one of these mess-heaps, emerging 
like a troglodyte, from a hole which burrows 
downward to a hidden cellar, there crawls 
forth a grimed soldier who warns you that 
neither you nor your car may progress farther 
except at your dire risk, since this is an outpost 
position and once you pass from your present 
dubious shelter you will be in f ill view and 
easy target range of Brother Boche. You 
have advanced to the very forward verge of the 
battle-line and you didn't know it. 

One rather dark night, travelling in an un- 
lighted car, three of us were trying to reach an 
American brigade headquarters where we ex- 
pected to sleep. Our particular destination 
was a hamlet in a forest just behind and 
slightly east of the main defences of Verdun. 

We must have taken the wrong turn at a 
crossroads, for after going some distance along 
a rutted cart track through the woods we came 
to where a deep ditch — at least it seemed to be 
a deep ditch — had been dug right across the 
trail from side to side. By throwing on the 
brakes the chauffeur succeeded in halting the 
car before its front wheels went over and into 
[S52] 



PARADOXES BEHIND THE LINES 

the cut. We climbed out to investigate, and 
then we became aware of an American sentry 
standing twenty feet beyond us in the aforesaid 
ditch. 

"We are correspondents," said a spokesman 
among us, "and we are trying to get to General 
So-and-So's headquarters. Can't we go any 
farther along this road.^*" 

Being an American this soldier had a sense of 
humour. 

"Not unless you speak German, you can't," 
he drawled. "The Heinies are dead ahead of 
you, not two hundred yards from this here 
trench. " 

Without once suspecting it we had ridden 
clear through a sector held by us to the front- 
line defences alongside the beleaguered city of 
Verdun. 

It's just one paradox after another, is the 
thing we call war. 



frsssi 



CHAPTER XXII 
THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



THE deadlier end of a snake is the head 
end, where the snake carries its stingers. 
Since something happened in the Gar- 
den of Eden this fact has been a matter 
of common knowledge, giving to all mankind 
for all time respect for the snake and fear of 
him. But what not everybody knows is that 
before a constrictor can exert his squeezing 
powers to the uttermost degree he must have 
a dependable grip for his tail, else those mighty 
muscles of his are impotent; because a snake, 
being a physical thing, is subject to the immut- 
able laws of physics. There must be a ful- 
crum for the lever, always ; the coiled spring 
that is loose at both ends becomes merely a 
piece of twisted metal; and a constrictor in 
action is part a living lever and part a living 
spring. And another thing that not every- 
body knows is that before a snake with fangs 
can fling itself forward and bite it must have 
a purchase for the greater part of its length 
against some reasonably solid object, such as 
the earth or a slab of rock. 
[354] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



Now an army might very well be likened to 
a snake, whicli sometimes squeezes its enemy by 
an enveloping movement but more often strikes 
at him with sudden blows. In the case of our 
own Army I particularly like the simile of a 
great snake — a rattlesnake, by preference, since 
in the first place the rattlesnake is essentially 
an American institution, and since once before 
our ancestors fought for their own freedom, 
much as we now are fighting for the freedom of 
the world, under a banner that carried the 
device of a rattler coiled. Moreover, the 
rattlesnake, which craves only to be let alone 
and which does not attack save on intrusion or 
provocation, never quits fighting, once it has 
started, until it is absolutely no more. You 
may scotch it and you may bruise and crush and 
break it, but until you have killed it exceedingly 
dead and cut it to bits and buried the bits 
you can never be sure that the job from your 
standpoint is finished. So for the purpose of 
introducing the subject in hand a rattlesnake 
it is and a rattlesnake it shall be to the end of 
the narrative, the reader kindly consenting — 
a rattlesnake whose bite is very, very fatal 
and whose vibrating tail bears a rattle for every 
star in the flag. 

For some months past it has been my very 
good fortune to watch the rattler's head, 
snouting its nose forth into the barbed wires 
and licking out with the fiery tongue of its 
artillery across the intervening shell holes at 

[355] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Heinie the Hun. Now I have just finished a 
trip along the body of the snake, stretching 
and winding through and across France for 300 
miles, more or less, to where its tail is wetted by 
salt water at the coast ports in the south and 
the east and the southeast. This is giving no 
information to the enemy, since he knows 
already that the snake which is the army must 
have a head at the battleground and a neck in 
the trenches, and behind the head and the neck 
a body and a tail, the body being the lines of 
communication and the tail the primary supply 
bases. 

His own army is in the likeness of a somewhat 
similar snake; otherwise it could not function. 
Moreover, things are happening to him, even 
as these lines are written, that must impress 
upon his Teutonic consciousness that our snake 
is functioning from tip to tip. Unless he is 
blind as well as mad he must realise that he 
made a serious mistake when he disregarded the 
injunction of the old Colonials: "Don't Tread 
On Me." 

In common with nearly every other man to 
whom has been given similar opportunity I have 
seen hundreds of splendid things at the Front 
where our people hold for defence or move for 
attack — ^heroism, devotion, sacrifice, an un- 
quenchable cheerfulness, and a universal deter- 
mination that permeates through the ranks 
from the highest general to the greenest private 
to put through the job that destiny has com- 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



mitted into our keeping, after the only fashion 
in which this job properly may be put through. 

In the trenches and immediately behind them 
I thought I had exhausted the average human 
capacity for thrills of pride, but it has turned 
out that I hadn't. For back of the Front, 
back of the line troops and the reserves, back 
all the way to the tail of the snake, there are 
things to be seen that in a less spectacular 
aspect — though some of them are spectacular 
enough, at that — are as finely typical of Ameri- 
can resource and American courage and Ameri- 
can capability as any of the sights that daily 
and hourly duplicate themselves among the guns. 

I am sure there still must be quite a number 
of persons at home who somehow think that 
once a soldier is armed and trained and set 
afoot on fighting ground he thereafter becomes 
a self-sustaining and self -maintaining organism; 
that either he is providentially provisioned, as 
the ravens of old fed the prophet, or that he 
forages for himself, living on the spoils of the 
country as the train bands and hired mercen- 
aries used to live by loot in the same lands 
where our troops are now engaged. Or pos- 
sibly they hazily conceive that the provender 
and the rest of it, being provided, manage to 
transport themselves forward to their user. If 
already we had not had too many unnecessary 
delegates loose-footing it over France this year 
I could wish that I might have had along with 
me on this recent trip a delegation of these 
[ 357 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

unreflecting folk, for they would have beheld, as 
I did, a greater miracle than the one vouchsafed 
Elijah, yet a miracle of man's encompassment, 
and in some measure would have come to 
understand how a vast American army, three 
thousand miles from home on foreign shores, 
is fed and furnished and furbished and refur- 
bished, not at the expense of the dwellers of 
the soil but to their abundant personal benefit. 
Finally they would see in its operation the 
vastest composite job of creation, organisation 
and construction that has ever been put 
through, in the space of one year and three 
months about, by any men that ever toiled 
anywhere on this footstool of Jehovah. 

To me statistics are odious things, and when- 
ever possible I avoid them. Besides, some of 
the figures I have accumulated in this journey 
are so incredibly stupendous that knowing them 
to be true figures I nevertheless hesitate to set 
them down. By my thinking way adjectives 
are needed and not numerals to set forth in any 
small measure a conception of the undertaking 
that has been accomplished overseas by our 
people and is still being accomplished with 
every hour that passes. 

Before this war came along Europeans were 
given to saying that we Americans rarely 
bragged of producing a beautiful thing or an 
artistic thing or a thing painstakingly done, but 
rather were given to advertising that here we 
had erected the longest bridge and there the 

[ 358 ] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



tallest building and over yonder the largest rail- 
way terminal and down this way the most 
expensive mansion — that ever was. Perhaps 
the criticism was justified in peacetimes. To- 
day in the light of what we have done in France 
these past few months back of the lines it not 
only is justified but it is multiplied, magnified 
and glorified. It no longer is a criticism; it is 
a tribute. When you think of the performance 
that stands to our credit you must think of it 
in superlatives, and when you speak of it you 
must speak in superlatives too. The words 
all end in "est." 

On French soil within twelve months, and in 
several instances within six months, we have 
among other things constructed and set going 
the biggest cold-storage plant, with two excep- 
tions, in the world; the biggest automobile 
storage depot, excluding one privately owned 
American concern, in the world; the biggest 
system of military-equipment warehouses in the 
world; probably the biggest field bakery in the 
world; the biggest strictly military seaport 
base in the world; what will shortly be the 
biggest military base hospital in the world; the 
biggest single warehouse for stock provender in 
the world; the biggest junkshop in the world; 
the biggest staff training school in the world — 
three months ago it had more scholars than 
any university in America ever has had; the 
biggest locomotive roundhouse under one roof; 
the biggest gasoline-storage plant; the next to 

[S59] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

the biggest training camp for aviators, the same 
being a sort of finishing school for men who 
have already had a degree of instruction else- 
where; the biggest acetylene-gas plant; and half 
a dozen other biggest things in the world — 
and we're not good and started yet! 

Every week sees the plants we have already 
constructed being enlarged and amplified; every 
week sees some new contract getting under way. 
Every month's end sees any similar period in 
the building of the Panama Canal made to 
seem almost a puny and inconsequential 
achievement by contrast and by comparison 
with what superbly and triumphantly has gone 
forward during that month. In military par- 
lance it is called the Service of Supplies. It 
should be called the Service of the Supremely 
Impossible Supremely Accomplished. When 
this war is ended and tourists are permitted to 
visit foreign parts Americans coming abroad 
and seeing what has here been done will be 
prouder of their country and their fellow 
countrymen than ever they have been. 

The Service of Supplies, broadly speaking and 
in its bearing on operations upon the Conti- 
nent, begins at tide mark and ends in the 
front-line trenches, with ramifications and side 
issues and annexes past counting, but all of 
them more or less interrelated with the main 
issues. For example the staff school can 
hardly be called a part of it, though lying, so 
to speak, in a whorl of the snake. It is divided 
[360] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



into a Base Section, which is that part situate 
nearest to the coasts; an Intermediate Section, 
which is what its name impKes ; and an Advance 
Section, which extends as close up to the zone 
of hostihties as is consistent with reasonable 
safety, the term "reasonable safety" being a 
relative term in these days of hostile raiding 
planes. The Base Section is subdivided again 
into several lesser segments, each centring 
about a main port. 

Broadly described it might be said that any 
military equipment in its natural course is first 
unloaded and stored temporarily at the bases. 
Then it is moved into the Intermediate Sec- 
tion, where it is housed and kept until called 
for. Thereupon it goes on a third rail journey 
to the Advance Section, out of the depots of 
which it is requisitioned and sent ahead again 
by trucks or wagons, or more commonly by 
rail, to meet the day-to-day and the week-to- 
week requirements of the units in the field. 

While this is going on all the sundry hundreds 
of thousands of men engaged on duty along the 
Service of Supplies must be cared for without 
impairment to the principal underlying purpose 
— that of provisioning and arming the fighting 
man, and providing supplies and equipment for 
the hospitals and the depots and all the rest of 
it, world without end. When you sit down 
to figure how many times the average consign- 
ment, of whatsoever nature, is loaded and 
unloaded and reloaded again even after it has 
[361] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

been brought overseas, and how many times it 
is handled and rehandled, checked in and 
checked out, accounted for and entered up, 
and eventually fed out in dribs as fodder for 
the huge coiling serpent we call an army — 
you begin to understand why it is that for 
every 100 men brought across the ocean up- 
ward of 30 must be assigned to work in some 
capacity or another along the communication 
ways. 

For the reader to visit the various depart- 
ments and sub-departments and subber sub- 
departments that properly fall within the scope 
of the Service of Supplies would take of his time 
at least two weeks. It took that much of my 
time and I had a fast touring car at my disposal 
and between stops moved at a cup-racing clip. 
For the writer to attempt to set down in any 
comprehensive form the extent of the thing 
would fill a fat book of many pages. By 
reason of the limitations of space this article 
can touch only briefly on the general scheme and 
only sketchily upon those details that seemed to 
the present observer most interesting. 

For example at one port — and this not yet 
the busiest one of the ports turned over to us 
by our allies — we are operating an extensive 
system of French docks that already were there 
and with them an even larger system of docks 
constructed by our Army and now practically 
completed. Likewise we have here a great 
camp, as big a camp as many a community at 
[362] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



home that calls itself a city, where negro 
labour battalions are living; two extensive rest 
camps for troops newly debarked from the 
transports; enormous freight yards and storage 
warehouses with still another camp handily 
near by for the accommodation of the yard 
gangs and the warehouse gangs; a base hospital 
that when completed will be the largest military 
base hospital on earth; a sizable artillery camp 
where gun crews and ordnance officers take 
what might be called a post-graduate course to 
supplement the training they had in the States; 
a remount station; an ordnance and aviation- 
storage warehouse; and a motor reception park. 

This, remember, is but one of several ports 
that we practically have taken over for the 
period of the war. On the land side of a second 
port are grouped a rest camp, a motor-assem- 
bling park, a system of docks inside a basin that 
is provided with locks, a locomotive-assembling 
plant, freight yards, warehouses without end, 
and two base hospitals. 

Taking either of these ports for a starting 
point and moving inland one would probably 
visit first the headquarters of the Service of 
Supplies, where also is to be found our main 
salvage depot for reclaiming all sorts of equip- 
ment except motor and air equipment — these 
go to salvage stations specially provided else- 
where — and not far away an aviation training 
centre. A little farther along as one travelled 
up-country he would come to an artillery in- 
[ 363 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

struction centre located in a famous French 
military school; to our engineer training centre 
and our engineer replacement depots; and 
thence onward to our air-service production 
centre with its mammoth plant for assembling, 
repairing and testing planes and with its camp 
for its personnel. This would bring one well 
into the Intermediate Section with its depots, 
freight yards and warehouses, and with its 
refrigerating plant, which is the third largest 
in existence and which shortly will have a twin 
sister a few miles away. There would be side 
excursions to the motor supply and spare 
parts depot, to the main motor repair station, 
to the locomotive repair shops, to the car 
shops, to the principal one of our aviation 
training centres, to the main field bakery, to 
the gasoline depots, the camouflaging plant 
and to various lesser activities. 

Finally one would land at the Advance Sec- 
tion depots with their complex regulating sta- 
tions for the proper distribution of the material 
that has advanced hither by broken stages. 
And yet when one had journeyed thus far 
one would merely be at the point of the begin- 
ning of the real work of getting the stuff through 
to the forces without congestion, without 
unnecessary wastage, without sending up too 
much or too little but just exactly the proper 
amounts as needed. 

Now then, on top of this please remember that 
each important camp, each station, each centre 
[364] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



has its own water system, its own electric light 
system, its own police force, its own fire depart- 
ment, its own sanitary squad, its own sewers, 
its own walks and drives and flower beds, its 
own emergency hospitals and dispensaries and 
surgeries, its own Y. M. C. A., its own Red 
Cross unit, generally its own K. of C. workers 
and its own Salvation Army squad; as likely as 
not its own newspaper and its own theatre. 
Always it has its own separate communal life. 

Figure that in a score of places veritable cities 
have sprung up where last January the wind 
whistled over stubbled fields and snow-laden 
pine thickets. Figure that altogether 40,- 
000,000 square feet of covered housing space 
are required and that more will be required 
as our expeditionary force continues to expand. 
Figure that in and out and through all these 
ramified activities our locomotives draw our 
cars over several hundred miles of sidings and 
yard trackage, which Uncle Sam has put down 
by the sweat of the brow of his excellent sons, 
supplemented by a copious amount of sweat 
wrung from the brows of thousands of German 
prisoners and thousands more of Indo-Chinese 
labourers imported by the French and loaned 
to us, and yet thousands more of native French 
labourers past or under the military age. 

Figure that while the work of construction 

has been going on upon a scope unprecedented 

in the scheme of human endeavour the men 

charged with the responsibility for it have had 

[365] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

to divide their energies and their man power 
to the end that the growing Army should not 
suffer for any lack of essential sustenance while 
the other jobs went forward toward comple- 
tion. Figure at the beginning of last winter, 
nine months ago, scarcely a spadeful of earth 
had been turned for the foundations anywhere. 
Figure in with all of this mental pictures of the 
Children of Israel building the pyramids for 
old Mister Pharaoh, of Goethals at the Isthmus, 
of Csesar's legions networking Europe with those 
justly celebrated Romanesque roads of his, of 
the coral insects making an archipelago in nine 
months instead of stretching the proceeding 
through millions of years, as is the habit of 
these friendly little insects; figure in all these 
things — and if your headache isn't by this 
time too acute for additional effort without 
poignant throbbings at the temples you may 
begin to have a shadowy conception of what 
has happened along our Service of Supplies 
over here in France since we really got busy. 

So much for the glittering generalities— and 
Lawsie, how they do glitter with the crusted 
diamond dust of endeavour and stupendous 
accomplishment! Now for a few particularly 
brilliant outcroppings : There is a certain port 
at present in our hands. For our purposes it 
is a most important port — one of the most 
important of all the ports that the French 
turned over to us. When our engineers set up 
shop there the port facilities were very much 
[366] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



as they had been when the Phoenicians first laid 
them out, barring some comparatively modern 
improvements subsequently tacked on by the 
Roman Emperors and still later by that famous 
but somewhat disagreeable old lady, Anne of 
Brittany. There were no steam cranes or 
electric hoists on the docks, and if there had 
been they would have been of little value 
except for ornamental purposes, seeing that by 
reason of harbourwise limitations ships of draft 
or of size could not range alongside but must 
be lightered of their cargoes at their mooring 
chains out in midchannel anywhere from half 
a mile to a mile and a half off shore. More- 
over, there was but one railroad track running 
down to the water's edge. Even yet there are 
no steam cranes in operation; both freight and 
men must be brought to land in lighters. But 
mark you what man power plus brains plus 
necessity has accomplished in the face of those 
structural obstacles and those mechanical draw- 
backs. 

At the outset it was estimated by experts 
among our allies that possibly we could land 
20,000 troops and 6,000 tons of freight a 
month at this port — if we kept nonunion hours 
and hustled. In one day in the early part of 
the present summer 42,000 American soldiers 
were debarked and ferried ashore with their 
portable equipment, and on another day of 
the same week through one of the original 
French-built docks — not through the whole row 
[367] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of them, but through one of the row — our 
stevedores cleared 5,000 tons of freight. Five 
thousand tons in one day, when those Conti- 
nental wiseacres had calculated that by strain- 
ing ourselves and by employing to their utmost 
all the facilities provided by all the docks in 
sight we might move 6,000 tons in a month! 
For this performance and for so frequent 
duplication of it that now it has become com- 
monplace and matter-of-fact and quite in 
accordance with expectations, a great share of 
the credit is due to thousands of brawny black 
American stevedores drawn from the wharves of 
Boston, New York and Philadelphia, Galveston, 
Savannah, New Orleans and Newport News. 
The victory that we are going to win will not 
be an all-white victory by any manner of means. 
Besides the physical limitations there were 
certain others, seeming at first well-nigh insur- 
mountable, which our military and civilian 
executives had to meet and contend with and 
overcome. I mean the Continental fashion of 
doing things — a system ponderously slow and 
infinitely cumbersome. When a job is done 
according to native requirements over here it is 
thoroughly done, as you may be quite sure, 
and it will last for an age; but frequently the 
preceding age is required to get it done. Euro- 
peans almost without exception are thrifty and 
saving beyond any conceivable standards of 
ours, but they are prodigals and they are 
spendthrifts when it comes down to expending 
[368] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



what in America we regard as the most precious 
commodity of all, and that commodity is time. 
Some of our masters of frenzied finance could 
wreck a bank in less time than it takes to cash a 
check in a French one. 

Not even the exigencies and the sharp emer- 
gencies of wartime conditions can cure a people, 
however adaptable and sprightly they may be 
in most regards, of a system of thought and a 
system of habit that go back as far as they them- 
selves go as a civilised race. Here is a concrete 
instance serving to show how at this same port 
that I have been talking about the Continental 
system came into abrupt collision with the 
American system and how the American system 
won out: 

The admiral in command of the American 
naval forces centring at this place received 
word that on a given day — to wit: three days 
from the time the news was wirelessed to him — 
a convoy would bring to harbour transports 
bearing about 50,000 Yank troopers. It would 
be the admiral's task to see that the ships 
promptly were emptied of their passengers and 
that the passengers were expeditiously and 
safely put upon solid land. After this had 
been done it devolved upon the brigadier in 
command of the land forces to quarter them in 
a rest camp until such time as they would be 
dispatched up the line toward the Front. 

The great movement of our soldiers over- 
seas, which started in April and which proceeds 
[369] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

without noticeable abatement as I write this, 
was then in midswing; and the rest camps in 
the neighbourhood were already crowded to 
their most stretchable limits. Nevertheless the 
general must provide livable accommodations 
for approximately 50,000 men somewhere in 
an already overcrowded area — and he had less 
than seventy-two hours in which to do it. He 
got busy; the members of his staff likewise got 
busy. 

That same night he called into conference a 
functionary of the French Government, in 
liaison service and detailed to cooperate with 
the Americans or with the British in just such 
situations as the one that had now risen. The 
official in question was zealous in the common 
cause — as zealous as any man could be — but he 
could not cure himself of thinking in the terms 
of the pattern his nation had followed in times 
of peace. 

"I must have a big rest camp ready by this 
time day after to-morrow," said, in effect, the 
American. "So I went out this afternoon with 
my adjutant and some of my other officers and 
I found it." 

Briefly he described a suitable tract four or 
five miles from the town. Then he went on: 
"How long do you think it would take for 
your engineers to furnish me with a fairly 
complete working survey of that stretch, includ- 
ing boundaries and the general topography with 
particular regards to drainage and elevations.'*" 
[ 370 ] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



The Frenchman thought a minute, making 
mental calculations. 

"From four to six weeks I should say," he 
hazarded. "Not sooner than four weeks 
surely. " 

"I think I can beat that, " said the American. 

He turned to his desk phone and called up 
another office in the same building in which 
this conference was taking place — the office of 
his chief engineer officer. 

"Blank," he said when he had secured con- 
nection, "how long will it take you to give me 
the survey of that property we went over this 
afternoon? You were to let me know by this 
evening. " 

Back came the answer: 

"By working all night, sir, I can hand it to 
you at noon to-morrow." 

"Are you sure I'll get it then?" 

"Absolutely sure, sir." 

" Good, " said the general, and rang off. He 
faced the Frenchman. 

"The survey will be ready at noon to- 
morrow," he said. "Now, then, I want 
arrangements made so that construction gangs 
can take possession of that land in the morning 
early. They've got a good many thousand 
tents to set up and some temporary shacks to 
build, ^nd I'm going to sick 'em on the job at 
daylight." 

"But what you ask is impossible, mon 
ginSral," expostulated the Frenchman. "Days 
[371] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

will be required — perhaps weeks. We must 
follow a regular custom, else there will be legal 
complications. We must search out the owners 
of the various parcels of land included in the 
area and make separate terms with each of 
them for the use of his land by your people. " 

"And meanwhile what will those 50,000 
soldiers that are due here inside of seventy-two 
hours be doing.''" 

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. 

"Very well then," said the American. "Now 
here's what we must do: I want you please to 
get in touch, right away, with your Minister of 
War at Paris and tell him with my compli- 
ments that at daylight in the morning I am 
going to take possession of that tract, and I 
want the sanction of his department for my 
authority in taking the step. Afterward we'll 
settle with the owners of the land for the 
ground rent and for the proper damages and for 
all the rest of it. But now — with my compli- 
ments — tell the minister we've got to have a 
little action. " 

"But to write a letter and send it to Paris 
even by special courier, and to have it read and 
to get a reply back, would take three days at 
the very quickest," the Frenchman replied. 

"I'm not asking you to write any letters. 
I'm asking you to call up the minister on the 
telephone — now, this minute, from this office, 
and over this telephone." 

"But, my dear general, it i&uot customary to- 
[ 372 ] 



THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE 



call a minister of the government on the 
telephone to discuss anything. There is a proce- 
dure for this sort of thing — a tradition, a prece- 
dent if you will. " 

"We'll have to make a new precedent of our 
own then. Here's the telephone. Suppose 
you get the minister on the wire and leave the 
rest to me. I'll do the talking from this end — 
and I'll take the responsibility." 

"But — but, general," faltered the dum- 
founded Frenchman, "have you thought of the 
question of water supply.'* There are no run- 
ning streams near your proposed site; there are 
no reservoirs. Of what use for me to do as 
you wish and run the risk of annoying our 
Minister of War when you have no water .f* 
And of course without water of what use is 
your camp.f*" 

"Don't let that worry you," said the Ameri- 
can. "The water supply has all been arranged 
for. In fact" — ^he glanced at his watch — "in 
fact you might say that already it is being 
installed. " 

"But — if you will pard@n me — what you say 
is impossible!" 

"Not at all; it's very simple. This town is 
full of vintners' places and every vintner has — 
or rather he did have — a lot of those big empty 
wine casks on hand. Well, I sent two of my 
oflficers out this afternoon and bought every 
empty wine cask in this town. They rounded 
up 600 of them, and there'll be more coming in 
[373] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

from the surrounding country to-morrow morn- 
ing. I know there will be, because I've got men 
out scouting for them, and at the price I'm 
willing to pay I'll have every spare wine cask 
in this part of France delivered here to me by 
this time to-morrow. But 600 was enough to 
start on. I've had 300 of them set up at handy 
places over my camp site — ^had it done this 
evening — and at this moment the other 300 are 
being loaded upon army trucks — six casks to a 
truck. To-morrow morning the trucks will 
begin hauling water to fill the casks now on the 
ground. " 

It was as he had said. The minister was 
called up at night on the telephone, and from 
him a very willing approval of the unprece- 
dented step in contemplation was secured. 
The water hauling started at dawn, and so did 
the tent raising start. The survey was de- 
livered at noon; half an hour later American 
labour battalions were digging ditches for 
kitchen drains and latrines, and in accordance 
with the contour of the chosen spot a makeshift 
but serviceable sewerage system was being 
installed. When the troops marched out to 
their camp in the late afternoon of the second 
day following, their camp was there waiting for 
them and their supper was ready. 



[374] 



CHAPTER XXIII 
BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 

TAKE any separate project along our line 
of communication. Pick it out at ran- 
dom. It makes no difference which 
particular spot you choose; you never- 
theless are morally sure to find stationed there a 
man or a group of men who have learned to 
laugh at the problem of making bricks without 
straw. If put to it they could make monu- 
ments out of mud pies. Brought face to face 
with conditions and environments that were 
entirely new to their own experience, and con- 
fronted as they were at the outset by the task 
of providing essentials right out of the air — 
essentials that were vitally and immediately 
needed and that could not be forthcoming from 
the States for weeks or even months — an 
executive or an underlying invariably would find 
a way out of the difficulty. 

There was pressing need once for a receptacle 
in which rubber cement could be mixed in 
small quantities. Neither the local community 
nor the government stores yielded such a 

I 375 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

thing and there was no time to send clear back 
New York or Philadelphia for it. The man 
who was charged with the responsibility of 
getting that rubber cement mixed went on a 
scouting tour. Somewhere he unearthed prob- 
ably the only ice-cream freezer in rural France 
outside of the immediate vicinity of Paris, and 
he acquired it at the proprietor's valuation 
and loaded it into his car and hurried back 
with it to his shop, and ten minutes after he 
arrived the required cement was being stirred 
to the proper consistency in the ice-cream 
freezer. 

At the main depot of automobile supplies 
they needed, right away, springs with which to 
repair broken-down light cars. As yet an ade- 
quate supply of spare parts had not been 
received from the base, nor was there any 
likelihood that a supply would be forthcoming 
at once. The colonel in charge of the depot 
sent men ranging through the countryside with 
instructions to buy up stuff that would make 
springs. They brought him in tons of pur- 
chases, and most unlikely looking material it 
was too — rusted chunks and strips and spirals 
of metal taken from the underpinnings of 
French market carts and agricultural imple- 
ments; but the forces in the machine shops 
sailed in and converted the lot into automobile 
springs in no time at all. 

This same colonel already had a plant which, 
exclusive of the value of buildings specially 
[376-] 



BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 



built, represents at this time a national invest- 
ment of $35,000,000, and the outlay was 
growing every hour. He used to be the head of 
a big metal-working establishment at home. 
As a specialist in his line he joined the Army 
to help out. Now every month he does a 
volume of buying that would have made his 
average year's turnover in times of peace look 
trifling in comparison. Just before he sailed 
to take over his present job he ordered 
$6,000,000 worth of motor parts at one fell 
swoop, as it were. 

Because of the rapidity with which our 
forces on foreign service multiplied them- 
selves there was a rush order from General 
Headquarters for more buildings and yet more 
buildings, at one of our warehouse depots, to 
provide for storage of perishable foodstuffs in 
transit from the rear to the Front. Between 
seven-thirty o'clock in the morning and five 
o'clock in the evening of a given day a gang 
of steel riggers accomplished the impossible by 
rearing and bolting together the steel frame — 
posts, girders, plates, rafters and crossbeams — 
for a building measuring 96 feet in width, 
24 feet in height and 230 feet in length, the 
same being merely one of the units of a struc- 
ture that very soon thereafter was up in the 
air and that measured 650 feet crosswise and 
650 feet lengthwise, with railroad tracks stretch- 
ing alongside and in between its various 
segments. 

[377] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

"When we laid out our original plans for 
this project the French said it would be en- 
tirely too large for our uses, no matter how 
big an army we brought over," remarked to 
me a young ex-civilian, now wearing a captain's 
markings on his flannel shirt, who had put 
through this undertaking. "Our people 
thought differently and we went ahead, trying 
to figure as we went along on all future con- 
tingencies. The result is that already we are 
enlarging upon the old specifications as rapidly 
as possible. Even so the supplies are piling 
up on us faster than we can store them. Look 
yonder. " 

He pointed to a veritable mountain of baled 
hay — a regular Himalaya of hay — which covered 
a corner of the field whereon we stood. It 
towered high above the tops of the trees 
behind it; it stretched clear to the edge of the 
woodlands beyond, and it was crowned, as a 
mountain peak should be, with white; only in 
this instance the blanket was of canvas instead 
of snow. 

"There are 80,000 tons of American baled 
hay in that pile," he said, "and in a month 
from now if the present rate of growth keeps 
up it will be bigger by a third than it is now. 
It's quite some job — taking care of this man's 
army. " 

In the midriff of the Intermediate Section is 
a project on which at this writing 10,000 men 
are at work, and on an air-service field adjoining 
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it 3,000 more men are engaged. Exclusive of 
material for local construction purposes 500 
carloads of strictly military supplies arrive 
here daily, and approximately 75 carloads a 
day move out. Later the ratio of outgoing 
equipment will increase, but the incoming 
amount is not liable to fall off very much. To 
house the accumulating mass here and else- 
where in the same zone, including as it does 
engineers' stores, ordnance stores, fresh meats, 
salt meats, medical stores, harness, guns and 
quartermasters' stores, there has been provided 
or will be provided 4,500,000 square feet of 
roof-covered space and 10,000,000 square feet 
of open storage space. 

When I came that way the other day miles of 
the plain had been filled pretty thoroughly with 
buildings and with side tracks and wagon 
roads; and, scattered over a tract measuring 
roughly six miles one way and four miles the 
other, between 13,000 and 14,000 men were 
engaged. In January of this year, when a 
man who now accompanied me had visited the 
same spot, he said there was one building 
standing on the area, and that two side tracks 
were in use; all the rest was a barren stretch of 
snowdrifts and half-frozen mud and desolation. 
They were just beginning then to dig the founda- 
tions of our main cold-storage plant. It is 
finished and in operation to-day. Besides being 
a model plant it is the third largest cold-storage 
plant in the world, and yet it is to be dis- 
[379] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

tinguished from the sixty-odd buildings that 
surround it only by the fact that it is taller 
and longer and has more smokestacks on it 
than any of the rest. 

At the principal depot of the Advance Section, 
where the chief regulating oflScer is stationed, 
one of the biggest jobs is to sort out the man 
provender as it flows in by rail and to fill up 
each of fifty or sixty track-side warehouses with 
balanced rations — so much flour, so miich salt 
meat, so much of salt, sugar, lard, canned 
goods, pepper, vinegar, pickles, and so on, to 
each building; or else to load a building with 
balanced man equipment — comprising shoes, 
socks, underwear, shirts, uniforms and the rest 
of it down to shoe laces and buttons, the 
purpose of this arrangement being that when a 
warehouse is emptied the man who is in charge, 
even before checking up on the loading gangs, 
already knows almost to a pound or a stitch 
just how many rations or how many articles of 
apparel have gone forward. 

In each warehouse the canned tomatoes, the 
vinegar and the stuff that contains mild acids 
are stored at the two ends of the building in 
crosswise barricades that extend to the roof. 
This disposal was an idea of the oflScer in control 
of the arrangement. He explained to us that 
in case of fire canned stuff bearing a heavy 
proportion of fluid would burn more slowly 
than the other foodstuffs, so there would be a 
better chance of confining the blaze to the 
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building in which it originated and of preventing 
its spread to adjoining or adjacent buildings, 
which might be of brick or concrete or stone 
or sheet metal, but which are more apt to be of 
frame. 

A British colonel on a visit of inspection to 
our Service of Supplies visited this project 
on the same day that I came. Radiating 
admiration and astonishment at every step and 
at every stop, he accompanied the young first 
lieutenant who was in personal charge of the 
warehousing scheme on a tour of his domain, 
which covered miles. When the round had 
been completed and the lieutenant had saluted 
and taken himself away the Britisher said to 
the chief regulating officer: 

"I have never seen anything so perfectly 
devised as your plan of operation and distribu- 
tion here. I take it that the young man who 
escorted me through is one of your great 
American managing experts. I imagine he 
must have been borrowed from one of those 
marvellous mail-order houses of yours, of which 
I have heard so much. One thing puzzles me 
though — he must have come here fresh from 
business pursuits, and yet he bears himself like 
a trained soldier. " 

The chief regulating officer smiled a little 
smile. 

"That man," he said, "is an old enlisted 
man of our little antebellum Regular Army. 
He didn't win his commission until he came 
[ 381 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

over here. Before that he was a noncom on 
clerical duty in the quartermaster's depart- 
ment, and before that he was a plain private, 
and as far as I know he never worked a day 
for any concern except our own Government 
since he reached the enlisting age." 

In addition to doing what I should say at an 
offhand guess was the work of ten reasonably 
active men, the colonel who supervises our 
Advance Section has found time since he 
took over his present employment to organise a 
brass band and a glee club among his personnel, 
to map out and stage-manage special entertain- 
ments for the men, to entertain visitors who 
come oflScially and unofficially, to keep several 
thousand individuals busy in their working 
hours and happy in their leisure hours, and at 
frequent intervals to write for the benefit of 
his command special bulletins touching on the 
finer sides of the soldier's duties and the soldier's 
discipline. He gave me a copy of one of his 
more recent pronouncements. He called it a 
memorandum; I called it a classic. It ran as 
follows : 

" 1. The salute, in addition to being a soldier's 
method of greeting, is the gauge by which he 
shows to the world his proficiency in the pro- 
fession, his morale and the condition of his 
discipline. 

"2. For me the dial of a soldier's salute has 
three marks, and I read his salute more accur- 
ately than he himself could tell me. 
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"3. The three gradations are: 

(a) I am a soldier; I know my trade or will 
know it very soon, and I will be a success as a 
soldier or a civilian, wherever I may be put. 

(6) I do not know what I am and do not 
care, I only do what I am forced to do, and 
will never be much of a success at anything. 

(c) I am a failure and am down and out, 
sick, homesick and disgruntled. I cannot stand 
the gaff. 

"4. As Americans try to conceal your feelings 
from our Allies. 

"Remember you are just as much fighters 
here as you would be carrying a pail of food 
to the fighting line or actually firing a gun. 

"Every extra exertion is an addition to the 
firing line direct. 

"Every bit of shirking is robbing the firing 
line." 

"Buck Up!" 

For qualities of human interest no joints in 
the snake's spine, no twists in his manifold 
convolutions measure up, I think, to the 
salvage depots. Once upon a time, and not so 
very long ago, an army in the field threw away 
what it did not use or what through breakage 
or stress became unserviceable. That day is 
gone. In this war the wastage is practically 
negligible. Our people have learned this lesson 
from the nations that went into the war before 
we entered it, but in all modesty I believe, from 

[ 383 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

what I have seen, that we have added some 
first-rate improvements to the plan in the few 
months that have been vouchsafed us for 
experiments and demonstrations. Moreover, to 
the success of our plans in this regard there 
have been diflSculties that did not confront our 
Allies to the same extent. For instance our 
biggest motor-repair depot is housed in what 
formerly had been a French infantry barracks — 
a series of buildings that had never been 
devised for the purposes to which they are 
now put, and that at first offered many serious 
problems, mechanical and physical. 

In tall brick buildings, under sheds and under 
tents and out in the open upon the old parade 
ground a great chain of machine shops, car- 
penter shops, paint shops, upholstery shops 
and leather-working shops has been coordinated 
and is cooperating to attain the maximum of 
possible production with the minimum of lost 
energy and lost effort. The scientist who recon- 
structs a prehistoric monster from a fossilised 
femur finds here his industrial prototype in 
the smart American mechanics who build up an 
ambulance or a motor truck from a fire- 
blackened, shell-riddled car frame, minus top, 
minus wheels, minus engine parts. What comes 
out of one total wreck goes into another that 
is not quite so totally so. And when a tool is 
lacking for some intricate job the Yank turns 
in and makes it himself out of a bit of scrap; 
and neither he nor his fellows think he has done 

[ 384] 



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anything wonderful either. It's just part of 
the day's work. 

The salvage depot for human equipment and 
for lighter field equipment is established at this 
writing in what was, not so very long ago, a 
shop where one of the French railroad lines 
painted its cars. It began active operations 
last January with six civilian employees under 
an officer who four weeks before he landed in 
France was a business man in Philadelphia. 
In June it had on its pay rolls nearly 4,000 
workers, mainly women and many of them 
refugees. 

When all the floor space available — about 
200,000 square feet of it — ^has been taken over 
the plant will have a personnel of about 5,000 
hands, and it will be possible to do the reclama- 
tion work in clothing, shoes, rubber boots and 
slickers, harness and leather, canvas and 
webbing, field ranges, mess equipments, stoveSj 
helmets, trenching tools, side arms, rifle slings, 
picks, shovels and metal gear generally for 
about 400,000 fighting men, with an estimated 
saving to Uncle Sam — exclusive of the vast 
sum saved in tonnage and shipping charges — 
of about $1,000,000 a month. 

At this time 10,000 garments and articles 
of personal attire are passing through this 
plant every twenty-four hours, and coming out 
cleaned, mended, remade or converted to other 
purposes. A man could spend a week here, I 
feel certain, and not count his sight-seeing time 
I S85 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

as wasted. Among the men workers he would 
find invalided and crippled soldiers of at least 
six nations — America, Belgium, France, Greece, 
Serbia and Italy. Among the women workers, 
who average in pay seven francs a day — big 
wages for rural France — he would find many 
women of refinement and education hailing 
from evacuated districts in northern France 
and Belgium, whose faces bespeak the terrors 
and torments through which they have passed 
in the attempted implanting of the seeds of 
Kultur upon their homelands. Now they sjit 
all day, driving sewing machines or managing 
knitting looms alongside their chattering, gossip- 
ing sisters of the peasant class. 

And every hour in this beehive of industry 
the man who looked close would come upon 
things eloquently bespeaking the tragedy or 
the comedy of war's flotsam and jetsam. Now 
perhaps it would be a battered German bugle 
picked up by some souvenir-loving soldier, only 
to be flung into the camp salvage dump when 
its finder wearied of carrying it; and now it 
would be a khaki blouse with a bullet hole 
in the breast of it and great brown stains, stiff 
and dry, in its lining. A talking machine in 
fair order, the half of a tombstone and the full- 
dress equipment of a captain of Prussian 
Hussars were among the relics that turned up 
at the salvage depot in one week. 

There is no dump heap behind the con- 
verted paint barn, for the very good reason 
[ 386 ] 



BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 



that practically there is nothing to dump. 
Everything is saved. The salvaged junk comes 
in by the carload lot from the Front — filthy, 
crumpled, broken, blood-crusted, verminous, 
tattered, smelly and smashed. Sorters seize 
upon it and separate it and classify it according 
to kind and state of disrepair. Men and women 
bear it in armloads to sterilisers, where live 
steam kills the lice and the lice eggs; thence it 
goes to the cleaning vats, after which it is sorted 
again and the real job of making something 
out of what seemed to be worse than nothing 
at all is undertaken, with experts, mainly 
Americans, to supervise each forward step in 
the big contract of renovation, restoration and 
utilisation. 

After the body clothing has been made clean 
and odourless it is assigned to one of three classes, 
to wit: (a) Garments needing minor repairs 
and still sightly and serviceable, which are put 
in perfect order and reissued to front-line troops; 
(6) garments not so sightly but still serviceable, 
which are issued to S O S workers, including 
stevedores, labourers, railroad engineers, fire- 
men and forestry workers; (c) garments that 
are not sightly but that will repay repairing. 
These are dyed green and given to German 
prisoners of war. Practically no new material 
is used for repair. Garments that are past 
salvation in their present shape are cut up to 
furnish patches. Three garments out of four 
are reclaimed in one form or another; the fourth 
[ 387 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

one becomes scrap for patchings. Shoes are 
washed in an acid disinfectant that cleanses the 
leather without injuring its fabric, and then 
they are dried and greased before going in to 
the workers. Shoes that are worth saving are 
saved to the last one; those past saving are 
ripped apart and the uppers are cut into shoe 
strings, while the soles furnish ground-up leather 
for compositions. Thanks to processes of wash- 
ing, cleansing and repairing, a salvage average of 
approximately ninety per cent, is attained in 
slickers and rubber boots. 

Last spring the high military authorities 
decided to shorten the heavy overcoats worn 
by our soldiers, so it befalls that the lengths of 
cloth cut from the skirts of the overcoats are 
now being fashioned at the salvage plants into 
uppers for hospital slippers, while old campaign 
hats furnish the material for the soles. The 
completed article, very neat in appearance and 
very comfortable to wear, is turned out here in 
great numbers. Old tires are cooked down to 
furnish new heels for rubber boots. Old socks 
are unravelled for the sake of the wool in them. 
Tin receptacles that have held gasoline or oil 
are melted apart, and from their sides and 
tops disks are fashioned which, being coated 
with aluminum, become markers for the graves 
where our dead soldier boys have been buried. 
Smaller tins are smelted down into lumps and 
used for a dozen purposes. The solder from 
the cans is not wasted either. Even the hob- 
[388] 



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nails of worn-down boot soles are saved for 
future use. 

Master of theatrical trick and device that 
he is, none the less David Belasco could learn 
lessons at our camouflaging plant. He prob- 
ably would feel quite at home there, too, seeing 
that the place has a most distinctive behind- 
the-scenes atmosphere of its own; it is a sort 
of overgrown combination of scenery loft, 
property room, paint shop and fancy-dress 
costumer's establishment, where men who gave 
up sizable incomes to serve their country in 
this new calling work long hours seeking to 
improve upon the artifices already developed — 
and succeeding — and to create brand-new ones 
of their own. 

As a branch of military modernism camou- 
flaging is even newer than the trade of scientific 
salvaging is and offers far larger opportunities 
for future exploitation. After all there are 
just so many things and no more that may be 
done with and to a pair of worn-out rubber 
boots, but in the other field the only limits are 
the limits of the designer's individual ingenuity 
and his individual skill. 

We came, under guidance, to a big open- 
fronted barracks where hundreds of French 
women and French girls made screenage for 
road protection and gun emplacements. The 
materials they worked with were simple enough : 
rolls of ordinary chicken wire, strips of burlap 
sacking dyed in four colours — bright green, 

[389] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

yellowish green, tawny and brown — and wisps 
of raflSa with which to bind the cloth scraps 
into the meshes of the wire. For summer use 
the bright green is used, for early spring and 
fall the lighter green and the tawny; and for 
winter the brown and the tawny mingled. 
For, you see, camouflage has its seasons, too, 
marching in step with the swing of the year. 
Viewed close up the completed article looks to 
be exactly what it is — chicken wire festooned 
thickly with gaudy rags. But stretch a breadth 
of it across a dip in the earth and then fling 
against it a few boughs cut from trees, and at a 
distance of seventy-five yards no man, however 
keen-eyed, can say just where the authentic 
foliage leaves off and the artificial joins on. 

For roadsides in special cases there is still 
another variety of camouflage, done in zebra- 
like strips of light and dark rags alternating, 
and this stuff being erected alongside the open 
highway is very apt indeed to deceive your 
hostile observer into thinking that what he 
beholds is merely a play of sunlight and shade 
upon a sloped flank of earth; and he must 
venture very perilously near indeed to discern 
that the seeming pattern of shadows really 
masks the movements of troops. This deceit 
has been described often enough, but the sheer 
art of it takes on added interest when one 
witnesses its processes and sees how mar- 
vellously its effects are brought about. 

In an open field used for experimenting and 
[S90] 



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testing was a dump pile dotted thickly with all 
the nondescript debris that accumulates upon 
the outer slope of a dug-in defence where 
soldiers have been — loose clods of earth, bits 
of chalky stone, shattered stumps, empty beef 
tins, broken mess gear, discarded boots, smashed 
helmets, and such like. It was crowned with a 
frieze of stakes projecting above the top of the 
trench behind it, and on its crest stood one of 
those shattered trees, limbless and ragged, 
that often are to be found upon terrains where 
the shelling has been brisk. 

Here for our benefit a sort of game was 
staged. First we stationed ourselves sixty feet 
away from the moumd. Immediately five heads 
appeared above the parapet — heads with shrap- 
nel helmets upon them, and beneath the helmet 
rims sunburnt faces peering out. The eyes 
looked this way and that as the heads turned 
from side to side. 

"Please watch closely," said the camouflage 
officer accompanying us. "And as you watch, 
remember this: Two of those heads are the 
heads of men. The three others are dummies 
mounted on sticks and manipulated from below. 
Since you have been at the Front you know 
the use of the dummy — the enemy sniper 
shoots a hole in it and the men in the pit, by 
tracing the direction of the bullet through the 
pierced composition, are able to locate the spot 
where Mister Sniper is hidden. Now then, try 
to pick out the real heads from the fake ones." 
[391] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

There were three of us, and we all three of us 
tried. No two agreed in our guesses and not 
one of us scored a perfect record; and yet we 
stood very much nearer than any enemy 
marksman could ever hope to get. The life- 
likeness of the thing was uncanny. 

"Next take in the general layout of that 
spot," said the camouflage expert, with a wave 
of his hand toward the dump pile. "Looks 
natural and orthodox, doesn't it.^^ Seems to be 
just the outer side of a bit of trench work, 
doesn't it? Well, it isn't. Two of those stakes 
are what they appear to be — ordinary common 
stakes. The other two are hollow metal tubes, 
inside of which trench periscopes are placed. 
And the tree trunk is faked, too. It is all 
hollow within — a shell of light tough steel with 
a ladder inside, and behind that twisted crotch 
where the limbs are broken off the observer 
is stationed at this moment watching us through 
a manufactured knothole. The only genuine 
thing about that tree trunk is the bark on it — we 
stripped that off of a beech over in the woods. 

"The dump heap isn't on the level either, 
as you possibly know, since you may have seen 
such dump piles concealing the sites of obser- 
vation pits up at the Front. Inside it is all 
dug out into galleries and on the side facing 
us it is full of peepholes — seventeen peepholes 
in all, I think there are. Let's go within fifteen 
feet of it and see how many of them you can 
detect." 

[ 392 ] 



BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 



At a fifteen-foot range it was hard enough for 
us to make out five of the seventeen peep 
places. Yet beforehand we understood that 
each tin can, each curled-up boot, each sizable 
tuft of withered grass, each swirl of the tree 
stump — masked a craftily hidden opening 
shielded with fine netting, through which a 
man crouching in safety beneath the surface 
of the earth might study the land in front of 
him. That innocent-appearing, made-to-order 
dump pile had the eyes of a spider; but even 
so, the uniformed invader might have climbed 
up and across it without once suspecting the 
truth. 

For a final touch the camouflage crew put 
on their best stunt of all. Five men encased 
themselves in camouflage suits of greenish- 
brown canvas which covered them head, feet, 
body and limbs, and which being decorated 
with quantities of dried, grasslike stuff sewed 
on in patches, made them look very much as 
Fred Stone used to look when he played the 
Scarecrow Man in "The Wizard of Oz" years 
ago. Each man carried a rifle, likewise camou- 
flaged. Then we turned our backs while they 
took position upon a half -bare, half -greened 
hillock less than a hundred feet from us. 

This being done we faced about, and each 
knowing that five armed men were snuggled 
there against the bank tried to pick them out 
from their background. It was hard sledding, 
so completely had the motionless figures melted 
[393] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

into the herbage and the chalky soil. Finally 
we united in the opinion that we had located 
three of the five. But we were wrong again. 
We really had picked out only one of the five. 
The two other suspected clumps were not men 
but what they seemed to be — small protrusions 
in the ragged and irregular turf. Yes, I am 
sure Mr. Belasco could have spent a fruitful 
half hour or so there with us. 

Thanks to yet another crafty and deceitful 
artifice of the camouflage outfit it is possible to 
make the enemy think he is being attacked by 
raiders advancing in force when as a matter of 
fact what he beholds approaching him are not 
files of men but harmless dummies operated 
by a mechanism that is as simple as simplicity 
itself. The attack will come from elsewhere 
while his attention is focused upon the make- 
believe feint, but just at present there are 
military reasons why he should not know any 
of the particulars. It would take the edge of 
his surprise, even though he is not likely to live 
to appreciate the surprise once the trick has 
been pulled. 

These details of the whole vast undertaking 
that I have touched upon here are merely bits 
that stand out with especial vividness from the 
recent recollections of a trip every rod of 
which was freighted with the most compelling 
interest for any one, and for an American with 
enduring and constant pride in the achievements 
of his own countrymen. 

[394] 



BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 



There are still other impressions, many of 
them, big and little, that are going always to 
stick in my brain — the smell of the crisp brown 
crusty loaves, mingling with the smell of the 
"wood fires at the bakery where half a million 
bread rations are cooked and shipped every day, 
seven days a week; the sight at the motor recep- 
tion park, where a big proportion of the 60,000 
motor vehicles of all sorts that are called for in 
our programme, as it stands now, can be stored at 
one time; the miles upon miles of canned goods 
through which I have passed, with the boxes 
towering in wails upon either side of me; 
the cold-storage chamber as big as a cathedral, 
where a supply of 5,000 tons of fresh meat is 
kept on hand and ready for use; a cemetery for 
our people, only a few months old, but lovely 
already with flowers and grass and neat gravel 
paths between the mounds; a blacksmith rivet- 
ing about the left wrists of Chinese labourers 
their steel identification markers so that there 
may always be a positive and certain way of 
knowing just who is who in the gang, since to 
stupid occidental eyes all Chinamen look alike 
and except for these little bangles made fast 
upon the arms of the wearers there would 
be complications and there might be wilful 
falsifications in the pay rolls; a spectacled 
underofficer hailing us in perfect but plaintive 
English from a group of prisoners mending 
roads, to say in tones of deep lament that he 
used to be a dentist in Baltimore but made the 

[ S95 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

mistake of going back to Germany for a visit 
to his old home just before the war broke out; 
a Catholic chaplain superintending the beauti- 
fying of a row of graves of Mohammedans who 
had died in our service, and v/ho had been laid 
away according to the ritual of their own faith 
in a corner of a burying ground where Chris- 
tians and Jews are sleeping together; a maimed 
Belgian soldier with three medals for valour 
on his shirt front, cobbling shoe soles in the 
salvage plant; a French waiter boy in a head- 
quarters mess learning to pick out the chords 
of Dixie Land on an American negro's home- 
made guitar; a room in the staff school where a 
former member of the Cabinet of the United 
States, an ex-Congressman, an ex-police com- 
missioner of New York City and one of the 
richest men in America, all four of them volun- 
teer officers, sat at their lessons with their 
spines fish-hooked and their brows knotted; a 
nineteen-year-old Yankee apprentice flyer doing 
such heart-stopping stunts in a practice plane 
as I never expect to see equalled by any veteran 
airman; the funeral, on the same day and at 
the same time, of one of his mates, who had 
been killed by a fall upon the field over which 
this daring youth now cavorted, with the 
coffin in an ambulance and a flag over the 
coffin, and behind the ambulance the firing 
squad, the Red Cross nurses from the local 
hospital and a company of his fellow cadets 
marching. 

[396] 



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And seeing all these sights and a thousand 
more like unto them I found myself as I finished 
my tour along the winding lengths of the 
great snake we call the Service of Supplies, 
wondering just who, of all the thousands among 
the men that labour behind the men behind the 
guns, deserve of their countrymen the greatest 
meed of credit — the high salaried executives 
out of civilian life who dropped careers and 
comforts and hope of preferment in their 
professions at home, to give of the genius of 
their brains to this cause; or the officers of our 
little old peacetime Army who here serve so 
gladly and so efficiently upon the poor pay 
that we give our officers, without hope ever of 
getting a proper measure of national apprecia- 
tion for their efforts, since this war is so nearly 
an anonymous war, where the performances of 
the individual are swallowed up in the united 
efforts of the mass; or the skilled railway train- 
men volunteering to work on privates' wages 
for the period of the war; or the plain enlisted 
man cheerfully, eagerly, enthusiastically toiling 
here, so far back of the Front, when in his 
heart he must long to be up there with his 
fellows where the big guns boom. 



[S97] 



CHAPTER XXIV 
FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

BLOWS with a hammer may numb one, 
but it is the bee-sting that quickens the 
sensibiHties to a reahsation of what is 
afoot. That is why, I suppose, the 
mighty thing called war is for me always sum- 
med up in small, incidental but outstanding 
phases of it. In its complete aspect it is too 
vast to be comprehended by any one mind or 
any thousand minds; but by piecing together 
the lesser things, one after a while begins in a 
dim groping fashion to get a concept of the en- 
tirety. 

When I went up to Ypres, it was not the un- 
utterable desolation and hideousness of what 
had been once one of the fairest spots on earth 
that especially impressed me: possibly because 
Ypres to-day is a horror too terrible and a 
tragedy too utter for human contemplation 
save at the risk of losing one's belief in the ulti- 
mate wisdom of the cosmic scheme of things. 
Nor was it the wreck of the great Cloth Hall 
which even now, with its overthrown walls and 
[398] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

its broken lines and its one remaining spindle of 
ruined tower, manages to retain a suggestion of 
the matchless beauty which forevermore is gone. 
Nor yet was it the cemetery, whereon for sheer, 
degenerate malignity the Germans targeted 
their heavy guns until they had broached near- 
ly every grave, heaving up the dead to sprawl 
upon the displaced clods. One becomes, in 
time, accustomed to the sight of dead soldiers 
lying where they have fallen, because a soldier 
accepts the chances of being killed and of being 
left untombed after he is killed. The dread 
spectacle he presented is part and parcel of the 
picture of war. But these men and women and 
babes that the shells dispossessed from their 
narrow tenements of mould had died peacefully 
in their beds away back yonder — and how long 
ago it seems now! — when the world itself was 
at peace. They had been shrouded in their 
funeral vestments; they had been laid away 
with cross and candle, with Book and prayer; 
over them slabs of the everlasting granite had 
been set, and flowers had been planted above 
them and memorials set up; and they had been 
left there beneath the kindly loam, cradled for 
all eternity till Gabriel's Trump should blow. 

But when I came there and saw what Kul- 
tur had wrought amongst them — ^how with ex- 
quisite irony the blasts had shattered grave 
after grave whose stones bore the carved words 
Held in Perpetuity and how grandmothers and 
grandsires and the pitiable small bones of little 
[ 399 I 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

children had been flung forth out of the gaping 
holes and left to moulder in the rags of their 
cerements where all who passed that way might 
see them — why, it was a blasphemy and an in- 
decency and a sacrilege which no man, behold- 
ing it, could ever, so long as he lived, hope to 
forget. 

And yet, as I just said, it was not the defile- 
ment of the cemetery of Ypres which impressed 
me most when I went up to Ypres. It was the 
lamp-posts. 

Ypres had been studded thick with lamp- 
posts; ornamental and decorative standards of 
wrought iron they were, spaced at intervals of 
forty yards or so for the length of every street 
and on both sides of every street. And every 
single lamp-post in Ypres, as I took the pains 
to see for myself, had been struck by shells or 
by flying fragments of shells. Some had been 
hit once or twice, some had been quite hewn 
down, some had been twisted into shapeless 
sworls of tortured metal; not one but was 
scathed after one mutilating fashion or an- 
other. 

In other words, during these four years of 
bombardment so many German shells had de- 
scended upon Ypres that no object in it of the 
thickness of six inches at its base and say, two 
inches at its top, had escaped being struck. 
Or putting it another way, had all these shells 
been fired through a space of hours instead of 
through a space of years, they would have 

I 400 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

rained down on the empty town with the thick- 
ness and the frequency of drops in a heavy 
thunder-shower. 

Never was the Hun quite so thorough as when 
he was punishing some helpless thing that could 
not fight back. 



Riding along through France on a Sunday, 
these times, one is reasonably certain to meet 
many little girls wearing their white commun- 
ion frocks, and many Chinamen under umbrel- 
las. 

The latter mostly hail from Indo-China. The 
French imported them in thousands for service 
in the labour battalions behind the lines. Dur- 
ing the week, dressed in nondescript mixtures 
of native garb and cast-off uniforms, they work 
at road-mending or at ditch-digging or on truck- 
loading jobs. On Sundays they dress them- 
selves up in their best clothes and stroll about 
the country-side. And rain or shine, each one 
brings along with him his treasured umbrella 
and carries it unfurled above his proud head. 
It never is a Chinese umbrella, either, but in- 
variably a cheap black affair of local manufac- 
ture. Go into one of the barracks where these 
yellow men are housed and at the head of each 
bunk there hangs a black umbrella, which the 
owner guards as his most darling possession. 
If he dies I suppose it is buried with him. 

Nobody knows here why every Sunday- 

[401] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Chinaman sports an umbrella, unless it be that 
in his Oriental mind he has decided that pos- 
session of such a thing stamps him as a person 
of travel and culture who, like any true cosmo- 
politan, is desirous of conforming to the cus- 
toms of the country to which he has been trans- 
ported. But a Frenchman, if careless, some- 
times leaves his umbrella behind when he goes 
forth for a promenade; a Chinaman in France, 
never. 

When a ship-load of these chaps lands they 
are first taken to a blacksmith shop and upon 
the left wrist of each is securely and perma- 
nently fastened a slender steel circlet bearing a 
token on which is stamped the wearer's name 
and his number. So long as he is in the em- 
ploy of the State this little band must stay on 
his arm. It is the one sure means of identify- 
ing him and of preventing payroll duplications. 

With the marker dangling at his sleeve-end 
he makes straightway for a shop and buys him- 
self a black cotton umbrella and from that time 
forward, wherever he goes, his steel bangle and 
his umbrella go with him. He cannot part 
from one and not for worlds would he part 
from the other. 

One Sunday afternoon in a village in the 
south of France I saw that rarest of sights — a 
drunken Chinaman. He wiggled and waggled 
as he walked, and once he sat down very hard, 
smiling foolishly the while, but he never lost 
his hold on the handle of his umbrella and 
[402] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

when he had picked himself up, the black bulge 
of it was bobbing tipsily above his tipsy head 
as he went weaving down the road behind a 
mile-long procession of his fellows, all march- 
ing double file beneath their raised umbrellas. 

Whisper — there is current a scandalous ru- 
mour touching on these little moon-faced allies 
of ours. It is said that among them every 
fourth man, about, isn't a man at all. He's a 
woman wearing a man's garb and drawing a 
man's pay; or rather she is, if we are going to 
keep the genders on straight. But since the 
women work just as hard as the men do no- 
body seems to bother about the deceit. They 
may not have equal suffrage over in Indo- 
China but the two sexes there seem to have a 
way of adjusting the industrial problems of the 
day on a mutually satisfactory basis of under- 
standing. 

* 4: iN 4c 4: 

"Piccadilly Circus. This way to Swan and 
Edgar's." 

The sign-board was the top of a jam box. 
The upright to which it was nailed was the 
shell-riddled trunk of a plane tree with one 
sprig of dried mistletoe clinging in a crotch 
where limbs had been, like a tuft of dead beard 
on a mummy's chin. Piccadilly Circus was a 
roughly-rounded spot at a cross-road where 
the grey and sticky mud — ^greyer than any mud 
you stay-at-homes ever saw; stickier than any 
mud you ever saw — made a little sea which 

[ 403 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

quaked and shimmered greasily like a quick- 
sand. The way to Swan and Edgar's was 
down a communication trench with shored sides 
to it, so that the semi-liquid walls could not 
cave in, and with duck boards set in it upon 
spiles for footing, so that men passing through 
would not be engulfed and drowned in the 
quagmire beneath. 

So much for the immediate setting. The ad- 
jacent surroundings were of a pattern to match 
the chosen sample. All about on every side for 
miles on end, was a hell of grey mud, here up- 
reared into ridges and there depressed into 
holes; and the ridges heaved up to meet a sky- 
line of the same sad colour as themselves, and 
the holes were like the stale dead craters. of a 
stale dead moon. 

Elsewhere in the land, spring had come weeks 
before, but here the only green was the green 
of the skum on the grey water in the bottoms 
of the shell-fissures; the only living things were 
the ravens that cawed over the wasted land- 
scape, and the great, fat, torpid rats with mud 
glued in their whiskers and their scaled tails 
caked with mud, that scuttled in and out 
of the long-abandoned German pill-boxes or 
through holes in the rusted iron sides of three 
dismantled British tanks. For lines of trees 
there were up-ended wrecks of motor trucks 
and ambulances; for the hum of bees, was the 
hum of an occasional sniper's bullet; for the 
tap of the wood-pecker, was the rat-tat of ma- 

[ 404 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

chine guns marking time for a skirmish miles 
away; for growing crops, in these once fecund 
and prolific stretches of the Flanders flat-lands, 
there were eighty-thousand unburied dead, all 
encysted in the mud except where the gouging 
shells had uprooted them out of the loblolly. 
And from far up on the rise toward Passchen- 
daele came the dull regurgitations of the big 
guns, as though the war had sickened of its 
own horrors and was retching in its nausea. 

What now was here must, in a measure, al- 
ways be here. For surely no husbandman 
would dare ever to drive his ploughshare 
through a field which had become a stinking 
corruption; where in every furrow he would in- 
evitably turn up mortal awfulness, and where 
any moment his steel might strike against one 
of the countless unexploded shells which fill the 
earth like horrid plums in a yet more horrid 
pudding. 

You couldn't give this desolation a name; 
our language yields no word to fit it, no ad- 
jective to cap it. Yet right here in the stark 
and rotten middle of it a British Tommy had 
stopped to have his little joke. Was he down- 
hearted .f* No! And so to prove he wasn't, — 
that his spirits were high and that his racial 
gift of humour was unimpaired, he stuck up a 
sign of sprawled lettering and it said: 

"Piccadilly Circus. This way to Swan and 
Edgar's." 

Mister Kaiser, you might have known, if 

[405] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

your mental processes hadn't been stuck on 
skew-wise, forty ways for Sunday, that you 
could never break through an army of good 
sports who make jokes at death and coin gibes 
at what might well drive less hardy souls to 
madness. 



Mighty few men outwardly conform to the 
roles they actually fill in life. I am not speak- 
ing of drum-majors in bands or tattooed men 
in side-shows or floor-walkers in department 
stores. Such parties are picked for their jobs 
because, physically, they live up to the popu- 
lar conception; perhaps I should say the popu- 
lar demand. I am speaking of the run of the 
species. A successful poet is very apt to look 
like an unsuccessful paper-hanger and I have 
known a paper-hanger who was the spittin' 
image of a free versifier. 

I think, though, of two men I have met over 
here who were designed by nature and by en- 
vironment to typify exactly what they are. 
One is Haig and the other is Pershing. Either 
would make the perfect model for a statue to 
portray the common notion of a field-marshal. 
General Sir Douglas Haig is a picture, drawn to 
scale, of the kind of British general that the 
novelists love to describe; in mannerism, in fig- 
ure, in size, in bearing, in colouring and expres- 
sion, he is all of that. And by the same tokens 
Pershing in every imaginable particular is the 
[406] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

typical x\mericaii fighting-man. Incidentally I 
might add that these two men are two of the 
handsomest and most splendid martial figures 
I have ever met. They say Haig is the best- 
dressed officer in the British army and that is 
saying a good deal, considering that the officers 
of the British army are the best dressed officers 
of any army. 

Pershing has the poise and port of a West 
Point cadet; has a cadet's waist-line and shoul- 
der-lines, too. A man may keep a youthful 
face but in the curves of his back is where 
nearly always he betrays his age. Look at Per- 
shing's back without knowing who he was and 
you would put him down as an athlete in his 
early twenties. 

I have taken lunch with General Sir Douglas 
Haig, and his staff, including his Presbyterian 
chaplain who is an inevitable member of the 
commander's official family, and I have dined 
with General Pershing and his staff, as Persh- 
ing's guest. When you break bread with a 
man at his table you get a better chance to 
appraise him than you would be likely to get 
did you casually meet him elsewhere. From 
each headquarters I brought away the settled 
conviction that I had been in the company of 
one of the staunchest, most dependable, most 
capable personalities to whom authority and 
power were ever entrusted. Different as they 
were in speech and in gesture, from each there 
radiated a certain thing which the other like- 
[407] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

wise possessed and expressed without knowing 
that he expressed it — a sense of a stupendous, 
unremitting responsibility, gladly accepted and 
well discharged; an appreciation of having in 
his hands a job to do, the tools for the doing of 
which are human beings, and in the doing of 
which, should he make a mistake, the error will 
be charged up against him in figures of human 
life. 

Always I shall remember one outstanding 
sentence which Haig uttered and one which 
Pershing uttered. Curiously enough, each was 
addressing himself to the same subject, to wit: 
the American soldier. Haig said: 

"The spirit of the American soldier as I have 
seen him over here since your country entered 
the war, is splendid. When he first came I 
was struck by his good humour, his unfailing 
cheerfulness, his modesty, and most of all by 
his eager, earnest desire to learn the business of 
war as speedily and as thoroughly as possible. 
Now as a British commander, I am very, very 
glad of the opportunity to fight alongside of 
him — so glad, that I do not find the words off- 
hand, to express the depth of my confidence in 
the steadfastness and the intelligence and the 
courage he is every day displaying." 

Pershing said: 

"When I think, as I do constantly think, of 
the behaviour of our men fighting here in a for- 
eign land; of the disciplined cheerfulness with 
which they have faced discomforts, of the con- 

[408 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

slant determination with which they have eon- 
fronted difficulties, and of the splendid dash 
with which they have met the enemy in bat- 
tle, I cannot speak what is in my mind because 
my emotions of gratitude are so great they 
keep me from speaking of these things." 



At a French railway station any day one 
sees weeping women but they do not weep un- 
til after the trains which carry their men-folk 
back to the trenches have gone. To this rule I 
have never seen an exception. 

A soldier who has finished his leave— a 'per- 
missionaire the French call him — comes to the 
station, returning to his duties at the Front. 
It may be he is a staff officer gorgeous in gold 
lace. It may be he is a recruit of this year's 
class with the fleece of adolescence still upon 
his cheeks but with the grave assurance of a 
veteran in his gait. Or it may be that he is a 
grizzled territorial bent forward by one of those 
enormous packs which his sort always tote 
about with them; and to me this last one of 
the three presents the most heart-moving spec- 
tacle of any. Nearly always he looks so tired 
and his uniform is so stained and so worn and 
so wrinkled! I mean to make no cheap gibe at 
the expense of a nation which has fine-tooth- 
combed her land for man power to stand the 
drain of four years of war when I say that ac- 
cording to my observations the back-line re- 

[409] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

serves of France in 1918 are a million middle- 
aged men whose feet hurt them. 

Be he staff officer though, or beardless youth 
or fifty-year-old rear-guard it is certain that his 
women-folk will accompany him to the station 
to tell him farewell. He has had his week at 
home. By to-night he will be back again at 
the Front, in the mud and the filth and the cold 
and the wet. By to-morrow he may be dead. 
But there is never a tear shed at parting. He 
kisses his wife or his mother or his sister or all 
of them; he hugs to his breast his babies, if he 
has babies. Then he climbs aboard a car 
which already is crowded with others like him, 
and as the train draws away the women run 
down the platform alongside the train, smiling 
and blowing kisses at him and waving their 
hands and shouting good-byes and bidding him 
to do this or that or the other thing. 

And then, when the train has disappeared 
they drop down where they are and cry their 
hearts out. I have witnessed this spectacle a 
thousand times, I am sure, and always the 
sight of it renews my admiration for the women 
of what I veritably believe to be the most pa- 
tient and the most steadfast race of beings on 
the face of the globe. 



In early June, I went up to where the first 
division of ours to be sent into the British hues 
for its seasoning under fire was bedded down in 

[410] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

billets hard by the Flanders border; and there 
I saw a curious thing. There were Canadians 
near at hand, and Australians and New Zea- 
landers and one might naturally suppose the 
Yankee lads would by preference fraternise 
with these soldiers from the Dominions and the 
Colonies who in speech, in mode of life and in 
habit of thought were really their brothers un- 
der the skin. 

Not at all. In many cases, if not in a major- 
ity of cases, that came under my notice I found 
Americans chumming with London Cockneys, 
trading tobacco for cheese; prunes for jam, 
cigarettes for captured souvenirs; guying the 
Londoners because they drank tea in the after- 
noons and being guyed because they themselves 
wanted coffee in the mornings. 

The phenomenon I figured out to my own 
satisfaction according to this process of deduc- 
tion: First, that the American and the Cock- 
ney had discovered that jointly they shared 
the same gorgeous sense of humour, albeit ex- 
pressed in dissimilar ways; second, that each 
had found out the other was full of sporting in- 
stincts, which made another tie between them; 
and third and perhaps most cogent reason of 
all, that whatever the Yankee might say, using 
his own slang to say it, sounded unutterably 
funny in the Cockney's ear, and what the 
Cockney said on any subject, in his dialect, 
was as good as a vaudeville show to the Yan- 
kee. 

[411] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Personally I do not believe it was the Anglo- 
Saxon strain calling to the Anglo-Saxon strain, 
because the American was as likely to be of 
Italian or Irish or Jewish or Teutonic or Slavic 
antecedents as he was to be of pure English 
ancestry. I am sure it was not the common 
use by both of the same language — with varia- 
tions on the part of either. But I am sure that 
it was the joyous prospect of getting free and 
unlimited entertainment out of the conversa- 
tions of a new pal. 

Anyway our soldiers are cementing us to- 
gether with a cement that will bind the Eng- 
lish-speaking races in a union which can never 
be sundered, I am sure of that much. 



The madness which descended upon our ene- 
mies when they started this war would appear 
to have taken a turn where it commonly mani- 
fests itself in acts of stark degeneracy. Every 
day I am hearing tales which prove the truth 
of this. If there was only one such story com- 
ing to light now and then we might figure the 
terrible thing as proof of the nastiness of an in- 
dividual pervert manifesting itself; but where 
the evidence piles up in a constantly accumu- 
lating mass it makes out a case so complete 
one is bound to conclude that a demoniacal 
rottenness is running through their ranks, af- 
fecting officer and men alike. For the sake of 
the good name of mankind in general one 
[412] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

strives not to accept all these tales but the 
bulk of them must be true. 

A young tank-ofiicer of ours whom I knew 
before the war in New York, where he was a 
rising lawyer, and whom I knew to be truthful, 
tells me that an honest appearing British non- 
com in turn, told him that a week or two ago 
the Britishers having cleaned up a nest of en- 
emy machine guns, sent a detail out to bury 
the dead. The squad had buried two Germans, 
then they came upon the body of one of their 
own men who had fallen in the fighting two 
days earlier when the Britishers made their 
first attack upon the Germans only to be forced 
back and then to come again with better suc- 
cess. The sergeant who stood sponsor for the 
narrative declared that as he bent over the 
dead Englishman to unfasten the identification 
tag from the wrist, he saw that something was 
fastened to the dead man's arm and that this 
something was partly hidden beneath the body. 
Becoming instantly suspicious, he warned the 
other men to stand back and then kneeling 
down and feeling about cautiously, he found a 
bomb so devised that a slight jar would set it 
off. Before they fell back, the surviving Ger- 
mans had attached this devilish thing to a 
corpse with the benevolent intent of blowing 
to bits the first man among the victors who 
should undertake to move the poor clay with 
intent to give it decent burial. 

Our men have been warned against gathering 

[413 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

up German helmets and German rifles in places 
from which the enemy has retired, because such 
souvenirs have a way of blowing up in the find- 
ers' hands by reason of the explosive grenades 
that have been attached to them and hidden 
beneath them with the cap so arranged that a 
tug at the wired-on connection will set oflF the 
charge; but this crowning atrocity shows they 
are making improvements in their system. 
From sawing down fruit trees, from shoveling 
filth in the drinking wells, from wantonly de- 
stroying the villages which for years have shel- 
tered them, from laying waste the lands which 
they are being forced now to surrender back 
into the hands of their rightful proprietors, the 
ingenious Hun has progressed in his military 
education to where he makes dead men serve 
his purposes. Personally, I have heard of but 
one act to match this one. An American troop- 
er entered a half -wrecked hamlet which the re- 
treating Germans had just evacuated, and on 
going into a villager's house, saw a china doll 
lying upon a cupboard shelf, and saw that, 
hitched to the doll, was one of these touchy 
hand-bombs. Now, it is only reasonable to 
assume the German who planned this surprise 
went upon the assumption that the doll would 
be the prized possession of some French child 
and that when the family who owned the house 
found their way back to it, the child would run 
first of all to recover her treasured dollie and 
picking it up would be killed or mangled, there- 

[ 414 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

by scoring one more triumph, if a small one, 
for Vaterland and Kaiser. 



To a dressing station behind our front lines 
up beyond St. Mihiel — so I am reliably in- 
formed — our stretcher-bearers brought two 
wounded prisoners and laid them down. One 
of the pair was a Prussian captain with a hole 
in his breast; the other a weedy boy-private 
with a shattered leg. There were two surgeons 
at work here — a Frenchman and an American. 

As the Frenchman bent over the captain, in 
the joy of service forgetting for the moment 
that the man lying before him was his enemy 
and filled only with a desire to save life and re- 
lieve human agony, the Prussian who seeming- 
ly had been unconscious, opened his eyes in 
recognition. Thereupon the surgeon, making 
ready to strip away the first-aid dressings from 
the punctured chest, spoke to his patient in 
French saying he trusted the captain did not 
suffer great pain. The reply was Prussianesque. 
The wounded man cleared his throat and spat 
full in the Frenchman's face. 

I hope I am not blood-thirsty, but I am 
happy to be able to relate a satisfactory se- 
quel. The Frenchman, who must have been a 
gentleman as well as a soldier, stood true to 
the creed of an honourable and merciful call- 
ing. He merely put up his hand and without a 
word wiped the spittle from his face which had 

[415 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

grown white as death under the strain of en- 
during the insult. But an American stretcher- 
bearer who had witnessed the act, snatched up 
a rifle from a heap of captured accoutrements 
near the door of the dugout and brought the 
butt of it down, full force, across the hateful, 
gloating mouth of the Prussian. 

For contrast, mark the behaviour of the boy- 
soldier who also had just been borne in. It was 
the American surgeon who took the private's 
case in hand. Now this American surgeon was 
of pure German descent and bore a German 
name and he spoke well the tongue of his an- 
cestors. So naturally he addressed the groan- 
ing lad in German. 

Between gasps of pain, the lad told his in- 
terrogator that he was a Saxon, that his age 
was eighteen and that he had been in service 
at the Front for nearly a year. Even in the 
midst of his suffering he showed pleasure at 
finding among his captors a man who knew 
and could use the only language which he him- 
self knew. Noting this, the surgeon continued 
to address the youngster as he made ready to do 
to the mangled limb what was needful to be done. 

As his skilled fingers touched the wound, 
some sub-conscious instinct quickened perhaps 
by the fact that he had just employed the 
mother-speech of his parents set him to whis- 
tling between his teeth a song he had known as 
a child. And that song was Die Wacht am Rhein. 

Under his ministering hands the young Saxon 
[416] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

twitched and jerked. Perhaps he thought the 
surgeon meant to gloat over him, captured and 
maimed for Hfe as he was; perhaps it was an- 
other emotion which prompted him to cry out 
in a half -strangled shriek: 

"Don't whistle that song — don't!" 
"I am sorry," said the American, "I did not 
mean to hurt your feelings. I thought you 
might like to hear it — that it might soothe 

you." 

"Like to hear it? Never!" panted the lad. 
"I hate it— I hate it— I hate it!" 

"Surely though you love your country and 
your Emperor, don't you?" pressed the Ameri- 
can, anxious to fathom the psychology of the 
prisoner's nature. 

"I love my country — yes," answered the boy, 
"but as to the Kaiser, to him I would do 
this — ." And he drew a finger across his throat 
with a quick, sharp stroke. 



I am putting down this scrap of narrative in 
a room in a hotel that is two hundred years old, 
in the heart of a wonderful old Norman city 
and while I am writing it, twenty miles away, 
in front of Montdidier, they are giving my 
friend the kind of funeral he asked for. 

I call him my friend, although I never saw 

him until four weeks ago. He was a man you 

would want for your friend. Physically and 

every other way, he was the sort of man that 

[417] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Richard Harding Davis used to love to describe 
in his stories about soldiers of fortune. He 
seemed to have stepped right out of the pages 
of one of Davis's books — he was tall and 
straight and slender, as handsome a man as 
ever I looked at and a soldier in every inch of 
him. The other officers of the regiment ad- 
mired him but his men, as I have reason to 
know, worshipped him — and that, in the final 
appraisals, is the test of an officer and a gentle- 
man in any army. 

I met him on the day when I rode up into 
Picardy to attach myself bag and baggage — 
one bag and not much baggage — to a foot-regi- 
ment of our old regular army, then moving into 
the battle-lines to take over a sector from the 
French. He had a Danish name and his fa- 
ther, I believe, was a Dane; but he was born in 
a Western state nearly forty years ago. In the 
Spanish war he was a kid private; saw service 
as a non-com in the Philippine mess; tried civil 
life afterwards and couldn't endure it; went to 
Central America and took a hand in some tin- 
pot revolution or other; came home again and 
was in business for a year or so, which was as 
long as his adventurous soul could stand a 
stand-still life; then moved across the line into 
the Canadian Northwest and got a job in the 
Royal Mounted Police. In 1914, when the war 
broke, he volunteered in a Canadian battalion 
as a private. On our entrance into the con- 
flict he was a major of the Dominion Forces. 

[418] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

He resigned this commission forthwith, hurried 
back to the States and joined up at the first re- 
cruiting office he saw after he reached New 
York. And now when I met him, he had his 
majority in an American regiment which has a 
long and a most honourable record behind it. 

During this past month I saw a good deal of 
him. So far as I could judge, he had one, and 
just one, bit of affectation about him — if you 
could call it that. He wore always the British 
trench helmet that he had worn in the Cana- 
dian forces and he liked to finger the gap in its 
brim where a bit of shrapnel chipped it as 
he climbed up Vimy Ridge, and he liked to tell 
about that day of Vimy so glorious and so 
tragic for the valorous whelps of the British 
lion who hail from our own side of the blue 
water. He had another small vanity too, as I 
now understand — a vanity which to-day is be- 
ing gratified. 

Six days ago I left the regiment to spend a 
day and a night with a battery of five-inch 
guns just west of Montdidier. As I was start- 
ing off he hailed me and we made an engage- 
ment for a dinner together here in this town 
where the food is very, very good, said dinner 
to take place "sometime soon." He was stand- 
ing in the road as I rode away and when I 
looked back out of the car he waved his hand 
at me. 

The village where I stayed for that night 
and the following day, formed a hinge in the 
[419] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

line that our forward forces had taken over. It 
was within two miles of the German trenches 
and within three or four miles of some of their 
heavy batteries. Through the night I slept at 
battalion headquarters, in the only house in 
the town which up until then had escaped seri- 
ous damage from German gunfire. 

Coming back again to my regiment — as I 
shall call it — on the second day following, I 
learned that almost immediately after my de- 
parture the batteries I left in and near this vil- 
lage had been ordered to take up a prepared 
position in a patch of woods a mile farther in 
the rear and that my friend's battalion had 
gone up to hold the town and to act as a re- 
serve unit there until its turn should come to 
relieve part of another infantry regiment in the 
trenches proper. So I knew that in all proba- 
bility he now was domiciled in the cottage 
where I had slept the night previous. As it 
turned out my guess was right — that was 
where he was. Three days ago I borrowed a 
side-car and ran on down here where I could 
get in touch with the divisional censor and file 
some of the copy I have been grinding out 
lately. 

Yesterday afternoon in the main square 1 
bumped into the adjutant of my regiment and 
with him, one of the French liaison oflBcers at- 
tached to the regiment. 

"Hello," I said, "what brings you two down 
here.?" 

•[ 420 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

"We came to get some flowers for the funeral 
to-morrow," the adjutant told me. 

"Whose funeral?" I asked. 

When they told me whose funeral, I was 
stunned for a moment. From them I learned 
when my friend died and how. And this, then, 
is the story of it: 

Night before last he and his battalion liaison 
officer, a Frenchman of course, and his battalion 
adjutant were eating supper in that same small 
red brick house which had sheltered me for a 
night. The Germans had been punishing the 
place at long distance; now there was a lull in 
the bombardment, but just as the three of them 
finished their meal, the enemy reopened fire. 
Almost at once a shell fell in the courtyard be- 
fore the house and another demolished a stone 
stable in the orchard behind it. All three hur- 
ried down into an improvised bomb-proof shel- 
ter in the cellar. 

"You fellows stay here," said the major 
when they had reached the foot of the stairs. 
"I left my cigars and a couple of letters from 
home upstairs in the kitchen. I'll go up and 
get them and be back again with you in a min- 
ute." 

Thirty seconds later, to the accompaniment 
of a great rending crash, the building caved in. 
Wreckage cascaded down the cellar stairs but 
the floor rafters above their heads stood the 
jar and the two who were below got off with 
bruises and scratches. They made their way up 

[ 421 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

through the debris. A six-inch shell had come 
through the roof, blowing down two sides of 
the kitchen, and under the shattered walls the 
Major was lying, helpless and crushed. 

They hauled him out. He was conscious but 
badly hurt, as they could tell. The adjutant 
ran to a dug-out on the other side of the village 
and brought back with him the regimental sur- 
geon. It didn't take the surgeon long to make 
his examination. 

To the others he whispered that there was 
no hope — the Major's spine was broken. But 
because he dreaded to break the word to the 
victim he essayed a bit of excusable deceit. 

"Major," he said, bending over the figure 
stretched out upon the floor, "you've got it 
pretty badly, but I guess we'll pull you through. 
Only you'd better let me give you a little jab 
of dope in your arm — you may begin to sufi^er 
as soon as the numbness of the shock wears off." 

My friend, so they told me, looked up in the 
surgeon's face with a whimsical grin. 

"Doc," he said, "your intentions are good; 
but there comes a time when you mustn't try 
to fool a pal. And you can't fool me — I know. 
I know I've got mine and I know I can't last 
much longer. I'm dead from the hips down al- 
ready. And never mind about giving me any 
dope. There are several things I want to say 
and I want my head clear while I'm saying 
them." 

He told them the names and addresses of his 
[ 422 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

nearest relatives — a brother and a sister, and 
he gave directions for the disposal of his kit 
and of his belongings. He didn't have very 
much to leave — professional soldiers rarely do 
have very much to leave. 

After a bit he said: "I've only one regret. 
I'm passing out with the uniform of an Ameri- 
can soldier on my back and that's the way I 
always hoped 'twould be with me, but I'm 
sorry I didn't get mine as I went over the top 
with these boys of ours behind me. Still, a 
man can't have everything — can he? — and I've 
had my share of the good things of this world." 

He began to sink and once they thought he 
was gone; but he opened his eyes and spoke 
again : 

*'Boys," he said, "take a tip from me who 
knows: this thing of dying is nothing to worry 
about. There's no pain and there's no fear. 
Why, dying is the easiest thing I've ever done 
in all my life. You'll find that out for your- 
selves when your time comes. vSo cheer up 
and don't look so glum because I just happen 
to be the one that's leaving first." 

The end came within five minutes after this. 
Just before he passed, the liaison officer who 
was kneeling on the floor holding one of the 
dying man's hands between his two hands, felt 
a pressure from the cold fingers that he clasped 
and saw a flicker of desire in the eyes that were 
beginning to glaze over with a film. He bent 
his head close down and in the ghost of a ghost 
[423 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of a whisper, the farewell message of his friend 
and mine came to him between gasps. 

"Listen," the Major whispered, '*01d 
Blank," — naming the regimental chaplain — 
"has pulled off a lot of slouchy funerals in this 
outfit. Tell him, for me, to give me a good 
swell one, won't you.'^" 

He went then, with the smile of his little con- 
ceit still upon his lips. 

That was why the two men whom I met here 
yesterday rode in to get flowers and wreaths. 
They told me the Colonel was going to have 
the regimental band out for the services to-day 
too, and that a brigadier-general and a major- 
general of our army would be present with 
their staffs and that a French general would be 
present with his staff. So I judge they are giv- 
ing my friend what he wanted — a good swell 
one. 



The France to which tourists will come after 
the war will not be the France which peace- 
time visitors knew. I am not speaking so much 
of the ruined cities and the razed towns, each a 
mute witness now to thoroughness as exempli- 
fied according to the orthodox tenets of Kul- 
tur. For the most part these never can be re- 
stored to their former semblances — Hunnish ef- 
ficiency did its damned work too well for the 
evil badness of it ever to be undone. Indeed I 
was told no longer ago than last week, when I 

[ 424 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

went through Arras, dodging for shelter from 
ruin-heap to ruin-heap between gusts of shell- 
ing from the German batteries, that it is the 
intention of the French government to leave 
untouched and untidied certain areas of wan- 
ton devastation, so future generations of men 
looking upon these hell's quarter-sections, will 
have before their eyes fit samples of the finished 
handicraft of the Hun. I am sure this must be 
true of Arras because in tlie vicinity of the ca- 
thedral — I mean the place where the cathedral 
was once — signs are stuck up in rubble-piles or 
fastened to upstanding bits of splintered walls 
forbidding visitors to remove souvenirs or to 
alter the present appearance of things in any 
way whatsoever. I sincerely trust the French 
do carry out this purpose. Then in the years 
to come, when Americans come here and behold 
this spot, once one of the most beautiful in all 
Europe and now one of the foulest and most 
hideous, they may be cured of any lingering in- 
clination to trust a people in whose veins there 
may linger a single trace of the taints of Kai- 
serism and militarism. However, I dare say 
that by then our present enemies will have 
been purged clean of the blight that now is in 
their blood. 

When I say that the France of the future 
will never be the France which once was a 
shrine for lovers of beauty to worship at — which 
was all one great altar dedicated to loveliness 
— I am thinking particularly of the rural dis- 

[425 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

tricts and not of the communities. I base my 
belief upon the very reasonable supposition 
that after the armies are withdrawn or disband- 
ed — or, as in the case of our foes, killed off or 
captured or driven back, — the peasants in their 
task of making the devastated regions fit once 
more for human habitation, will turn to the 
material most plentifully at hand and that of 
which the quickest use can be made. This 
means then, that instead of rebuilding with 
masonry and cement and plaster after the an- 
cient modes, they will employ the salvage of 
military constructions. And by that same sign 
it means that ugly characterless wooden build- 
ings with roofs of corrugated iron, and all slab- 
sided and angular and hopelessly plain, will re- 
place the quaint gabled houses that are gone 
— and gone forever; and that where the pic- 
turesque stone fences ran zig-zagging across 
the faces of the meadows, and likewise where 
the centuries-old, plastered walls rose about 
byre and midden and stable-yard, will instead 
be stretched lines of barbed wire, nailed to 
wooden posts. 

The stuff will be there — m incredible quan- 
tities — and it will be cheap and it will be avail- 
able for immediate use, once the forces of the 
Allies have scattered. It is only natural to as- 
sume therefore that the thrifty country-folk 
and the citizens of the villages will take it over. 
For a fact in certain instances they are already 
doing so. Just the other day, up near the 
[426] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

Flanders border in the British-held territory, 1 
saw a half grown boy wriggling through a maze 
of rusted wire along an abandoned defence line, 
like Brer Rabbit through the historic brier- 
patch; and when I drew nearer, curious to know 
what sort of game he played all alone here in a 
land where every game except the great game 
of war is out of fashion, I saw that he was tear- 
ing down the strands of the wire, and through 
the interpreter he told me he was going to en- 
close his mother's garden with the stuff. Think 
of a French garden fenced in after the style of 
a Nebraska ranch yard. Also I have taken 
note that the peasants are removing the plank 
shorings from the sides of old, disused trenches 
and with the boards thus secured are knocking 
up barns and chicken-sheds and even make- 
shift dwellings. 

Assuredly it will never be the old France, 
physically. But spiritually, the new France, 
wearing the scars of her sacrifice as the Re- 
deemer of Mankind wore the nail-marks of His 
crucifixion, will be a vision of glory before the 
eyes of men forevermore. I like this simile as 
I set it down in my note-book. And I mean no 
irreverence as I liken the barbed wire to the 
Crown of Thorns and think of two cross-pieces 
of ugly wood out of a barrack or a rest-billet as 
being erected into the shape of The Cross. 



When the military policemen first came upon 

[427] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

him in the Gare du Nord he made a picture 
worth looking at. For he stood above six-feet- 
two in his soleless and broken brogans, and he 
was as black as a coal-hole at twelve o'clock at 
night during a total eclipse of the moon and he 
was as broad across between the shoulders as 
the back of a hack. He wore a khaki shirt, a 
pair of ragged, blue overalls and an ancient 
campaign hat. He didn't appear to be going 
anywhere in particular; he was just standing 
there. 

Now the M. P.s have a little scheme for 
trapping deserters and malingerers. They edge 
close up behind a suspect and then one of them 
snaps out "Shun!" in the tones of a drill-offi- 
cer. If the fellow really is a truant from ser- 
vice, force of habit and the shock of surprise 
together make him come to attention and then 
he's a gone gosling, marching off the calaboose 
with steel jewelry on both his wrists. 

But when this pair slipped nearer and near- 
er until they could touch the big darky, and 
one of them barked the command right in his 
ear, he merely turned his head and without 
straightening his languid form inquired polite- 

ly: 

"Speakin' to me, Boss.f^" 

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, one of 
them asked for his papers. 

"Whut kinder papers?" 

"Your military papers — your pass — some- 
thing to identify you by." 
[ 428 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

"W'y, Boss," he asked, "does you need pa- 
pers to go round wid yere in Sant Nazare?" 

"This ain't St. Nazare," they told him. 
"This is Paris." 

"Paris? My Lawd! Den dat 'splains it." 

"Explains what.^^" They were getting cross 
with him. 

"'Splains w'y I couldn't fine all dem niggers 
dey tole me wuz in Sant Nazare. Here I been 
in Paris all dis time — ever since early dis maw- 
nin' — an' I didn't know it. No wonner I 
couldn't locate dem big wharf-boats an' dem 
niggers." 

"Never mind that now — I just asked you 
where're your papers.?" 

" Papers .f^ Me.? Huh, Boss, I ain't got no 
more papers 'n a ha'nt. Effen you needs pa- 
pers to git about on, you gen'elmen better tek 
me an' lock me up right now, 'ka'se I tells you, 
p'intedly, I ain't got nary paper to my name." 

"That's precisely what we aim to do. Come 
on, you." 

They took him to number ten Rue St. Anne 
where our provost-marshal in Paris has his 
headquarters and there the tale came out. I 
got it first hand from the captain of the Intel- 
ligence Department who examined him and I 
know I got it straight, because the captain was 
a monologist on the Big Time before he signed 
up for the war, and he has both the knack of 
narrative and the gift of dialects. Then later 
I myself saw the central figure in the comedy 
[429] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

and interviewed him. In a way of speaking, I 
think his adventure was the most remarkable 
of any I have heard of on this side of the ocean 
— and I have heard my share. How a big lub- 
berly American negro with absolutely nothing 
on his person to vouch for him or his purposes, 
could travel half way across a country where no 
one else may stir a mile without a pocket full of 
passes and vises and credentials; and how, lack- 
ing any knowledge of the language, he man- 
aged to do what he did do — but I am antici- 
pating. 

It was at ten Rue St. Anne that my friend 
the ex-vaudevillian took him in hand with the 
intention of conferring the third degree. For 
quite a spell the interrogator couldn't make up 
his mind whether he dealt with the most guile- 
less human being on French soil or with a 
shrewd black fugitive hiding his real self be- 
hind a mask of innocence. After he had made 
sure the prisoner was what he seemed to be, 
the intelligence officer kept on at him for the 
fun of the thing. 

Batting his eyes as the questions pelted at 
him, the giant made straightforward answers. 
His name was Watterson Towers; his age was 
summers 'round twenty-fo' or twenty-five, he 
didn't perzactly 'member w'ich; he was born 
and fotched up in Bowlin' Green, Ejntucky, 
and at the time of his coming to France he re- 
sided at number thirty-fo'. East Pittsburgh. ^ 

"Number thirty-four what.f^" asked the in- 
quisitor. 

[ 430] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

"Naw suh, not no thirty-fo' nothin' — jes' 
plain tlairty-fo'." 

"But what street is it on?" 

*"Tain't on no street, Boss." 

*'What do you mean — no street?" 

"Boss, wuz you ever in East Pittsburgh? 
Well suh, den does you 'member dat string of 
little houses dat stands in a row right 'longside 
de railroad tracks ez you comes into town f um 
de fur side? 'Taint no street, it's jes' only 
houses. Well suh, I lives in de thirty-fo'th 
one." 

"I see. How did you get here?" 

"Me? I rid, mostly." 

"Rode on what?" 

"Rid part de time on a ship an' part de time 
on de steam-cyars but fust an' last I done a 
mighty heap of walkin', also." 

Further questioning elicited from Watterson 
Towers these salient facts: He had taken a 
job which carried him from East Pittsburgh to 
New York and left him stranded there. He 
had heard about the draft. He knew that 
sooner or later the draft would catch him and 
send him off to France where he would be ex- 
pected to fight Germans, so he decided that 
before this could happen, he would visit France 
on his own hook, and as a civilian bystander, a 
private observer, so to speak, would view some 
of the operation of war at first-hand, with a 
view to deciding whether he cared enough for 
it as a sport, to take a hand in it voluntarily. 

[ 4S1 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

He had smuggled himself aboard a transport — 
Heaven alone knew how! — and fortified with a 
bag of ginger-snaps he had remained hidden 
away in a cargo-hold until the ship sailed. Two 
days out from land a new and very painful sick- 
ness overcame the stowaway and he made his 
way up on deck for air. There he had been 
caught and had been sent to the galley to 
work his passage across. When he had prog- 
ressed thus far, his cross-examiner broke in. 
"What was the name of the ship.?" 
"Boss, I plum' disremembers, but it muster 
been de bigges' ship dey is. W'y suh, dey wuz 
'most six-hund'ed folks on dat ship, an' I had 
to wash up after ever' las' one of 'em. W'ite 
folks suttinly teks a lot of dishes w'en dey 
eats— I'll tell de world dat." 

"Well, where did the ship land.? — do you 
know that much.?" 

"Boss, hit wuz some place wid a outlandish 
name an' dat's all I kin tell you. I never wuz 
no hand fur 'memberin' reg'lar names let alone 
dese yere jabber kind of words lak dese yere 
French folks talks wid." 

"What happened when you came ashore.?" 
"W'y, suh, dey let me off de ship an' a w'ite 
man on de wharf-boat he tells me I'se landed 
right spang in France an' he axes me does I 
want a job of wuk an' I tells him *Naw suh, 
not yit.' I tells him I'se aimin' to travel round 
an' see de country an' de war 'fore I settles 
down to anythin'. Den 'nother w'ite man dat's 

[432] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

standin' dere he tells me dey's a lot of my col- 
our in a place called Sant Nazare an' I 'cides 
I'll go dere an' 'sociate aw'ile wid dem niggers. 
So I changed my money an' I " 

"I thought you said you didn't have any 
money when you started?" 

"I didn't. Boss, but de w'ite folks on de ship 
dey taken up a c'lection fur me, account of me 
washin' all dem dishes so nice an' clean. It 
come to twenty doUahs. So I changes it into 
dese yere francs. De man give me twenty 
francs fur my twenty doUahs — didn't charge 
me no interes' a-tall, but jes' traded even; an' 
den I sets out to find dis yere Sa,nt Nazare 
place. Dat wuz two days ago an' I been mov- 
in' stiddy ever sense." 

**How did you know what train to take.^^" 

*'I didn't. I jes' went to de depot an' I 
dim' abo'd de fus' train I sees dat look lak she 
might be fixin' to go sommers. An' after 'w'ile 
one of dese Frenchies come 'round to me whar 
I wuz settin' an' he jabber somethin' at me an' 
I tell him plain ez I kin, whar I wants to go 
an' is dis de right train .^^ An' den he jabber 
some mo' an' I keep on tellin' him an' after 
'w'ile he jes th'ow up both hands, lak dis, an' 
go on off an' leave me be in peace. Wich dat 
very same thing happen to me ever' time I git 
on a train an' I done been on three or fo' 'fore 
I gits to dis place, dis mawnin'. 

**My way wuz to stay by de train t'well she 
stop an' don't start no mo' an! den I'd git off 
[ 433 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

an' walk round lookin' for de big wharf-boats 
where de w'ite man tole me dem niggers would 
be wukkin', but not no place I went did I see 
ary wharf-boats, so I jes' kept a-movin' t'well I 
got yere, lak I'm tellin' it to you, an' I says to 
myself den, ' Dis sutt'inly must be Sant Nazare 
— it's shore big enough to be, anyway.' But I 
walked 'bout ten miles an' I couldn't find no 
wharf -boats an' no niggers neither, scusin' some 
Frenchified niggers all dressed up lak Misty 
Shriners, an' dey couldn't talk our way of talk- 
in'. I seen plenty of our soldiers but I wuz'n' 
aimin' to be pesterin 'round wid no soldiers 'till 
I'd done seen de war. So finally I sees a big 
place dat look lak it mout be 'nother depot, an' 
I went on in there an' wuz fixin' to tek de 
next train out, w'en dem two soldier-men of 
your'n wid de bands on dere arms dey 
come up to me an' dey run me in. An' yere I 
is." 

It was explained to Watterson Towers that, 
to avoid complications he had better enter the 
army forthwith and very promptly he agreed. 
Travel, seemingly, was beginning to pall on 
him. Then to spin out his gorgeous humour of 
the interview, the intelligence officer put one 
more question and when he told me the an- 
swer I agreed with him the reward had been 
worth the effort. 

"Now, Watterson," he said, "what kind of a 
regiment would you prefer to join — an all-white 
regiment or an all-black regiment or a mixed 

[ 434 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

regiment, part black and part white? You can 
take your choice — so speak up. " 

"Boss," said Watterson, "it don't make no 
dif'ence a-tall to me w'ich kind of a regiment 
'tis — jes' so it's got a band!" 



One's war-time experiences is crowded with 
constant surprises. For five months, off and 
on, I have been living on the fourth floor of 
one of the largest and most noted of Paris ho- 
tels, and not until to-day did I find out that 
two floors of the building have all along been 
in possession of the government for hospital 
purposes. The patients, mainly wounded men 
who have been invalided back from the trench- 
es are brought by night and carried in through 
a rear entrance, which opens on a barred and 
guarded alley-way. The guests never see 
them and they never come in contact with the 
guests. 

Under my feet all these weeks hundreds of 
disabled fighting-men have been getting better 
or getting worse, recovering or dying, and I 
would never have guessed their presence had it 
not been for the chance remark of a govern- 
ment official who is connected with one of the 
bureaus having charge of the blessSs. 

I learn now that the same thing is true of 
several other prominent hotels, but so careful- 
ly is the business carried on and so skillfully do 
the authorities hide their secret that I am sure 
[435] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

not one guest in a thousand ever stumbles upon 
the fact. 



When I was writing a tale about one visit of 
several which I paid to the old Luneville sec- 
tors where our buddies, in the spring of this 
year, first left their tooth-marks on the Heinies, 
I forgot to tell of an incident that occurred on 
the last day of our stay up there as the guests 
of a regiment of the Rainbows. 

Martin Green and I had just returned from 
a four-hour tramp through some of our trench- 
es. It was long after the hour for the mid-day 
meal when we got back, weary and mud-coat- 
ed, to regimental headquarters in a knocked- 
about village. But the colonel's cook obliging- 
ly dished up some provender for us and for 
the young intelligence officer who had been our 
guide that day. Just as we were finishing the 
last round of flap-jacks with molasses, the Ger- 
mans began shelling the battered town so we 
adjourned to the nearest dug-out, which was 
the next door cellar, that had been thickened 
as to its roof with sand-bags and loose earth 
and strips of railroad iron. Down there we 
came upon several others who had taken shel- 
ter, including one of the majors. 

"When were you fellows figuring on starting 
back to your own billet.?" he inquired. "Some- 
time this afternoon, wasn't it.f*" 

"Yes," said Green, "we had counted on leav- 

[436] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

ing here about three o'clock. But I guess we'll 
be delayed, if the Germans keep up their straf- 
ing. Neither of us fancies trying to make a 
break out of here while the bombardment is 
going on, and I don't suppose our chauffeur 
would be so very enthusiastic over the pros- 
pect, either. I only hope the Germans let up 
on the fireworks display before dark. It's forty- 
odd miles to where we're going and the thought 
of riding that distance after nightfall over these 
torn-up roads with no lights burning on our 
car and the road full of supply trains coming 
up to the front, does not strike me as a particu- 
larly alluring prospect. " 

"Don't worry," said the Major with a grin 
which proved he was holding back something. 
"You can get away from here in — well, let's 
see — . "He glanced at the watch on his wrist. 
"In just one hour and three-quarters, or to be 
exact, in one hour and forty-six minutes from 
now, you can be on your way. It's now 2:15. 
At precisely one minute past four you can climb 
into your car and beat it from here and if you 
hurry you'll be home in ample time for din- 
ner." 

"You talk as though you were in the confi- 
dence of these Germans," quoth Green. 

"In a way of speaking, I am," said the Ma- 
jor. "I've been here for eight days now, and 
every day since I arrived, promptly at 2 p. m. 
those batteries over yonder open up on this 
place and all hands go underground. The shell- 
[437] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

ing continues — in the ratio of one shell every 
two minutes — until four o'clock sharp. Then 
it stops, and until two o'clock the next day, 
things around here are nice and quiet and 
healthy. So don't get chesty and think this 
show was put on especially on your account, 
because it wasn't: it's in accordance with the 
regular programme. Therefore, judging to-day's 
matinee by past performances, I would say that 
at one minute past four you chaps can be on 
your way with absolutely nothing to worry 
about except the chances of a puncture." 

"Funny birds — these Germans," exclaimed 
one of us, still half in doubt as to whether the 
Major joked. 

"Funny birds is right," he said, "and then 
some. We've got it doped out after this fash- 
ion: The officer in command of the German 
battery just over the hill from where you were 
to-day probably has instructions to shoot so 
many rounds a day into us. So in order to sim- 
plify the matter he, being a true German, starts 
at two and quits at four, when he has used up 
his supply of ammunition for the day. Now 
that we're wise to his routine we don't take 
any chances, but withdraw ourselves from so- 
ciety during the two hours of the day when he 
is enjoying his customary afternoon hate. Old 
George J. Methodical we call him. You fel- 
lows still don't quite believe me, eh? Well, 
wait and see whether I'm right." 

We waited and we saw, and he was right. 
[ 438 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

Somewhere over our heads a charge of shrap- 
nel or of high explosive exploded every two 
minutes until precisely four o'clock. Sharp on 
the hour the shells quit falling and before the 
dust had settled after the farewell blast we 
were gathering up our dunnage for the depart- 
ure. As we sped out of the huddle of shattered 
cottages and struck the open road there was a 
half-mile stretch ahead of us and while we 
traversed it we were within easy range and 
plain view of the Germans. But no one took 
a wing shot at us as we whizzed across the open 
space. 

After we slid down over the crest into the 
protection of the wooded valley below, I re- 
membered an old story — the story of the ped- 
dler who invaded a ten-floor office building in 
New York and made his way to the top floor 
before one of the hall attendants found him. 
The attendant kicked the peddler down one 
flight of stairs to the ninth floor and there an- 
other man fell upon him and kicked him down 
another flight to the eighth floor where a third 
man took him in hand and kicked him a flight 
and so he progressed until he had been kicked 
down ten flights by ten different men and had 
landed upon the sidewalk a bruised and bat- 
tered wreck, with the fragments of his wares 
scattered about him. He sat up on the pave- 
ment then and in tones of deep admiration re- 
marked: *'Mein Gott, vot a berfect system!" 

In the original version of the tale the ped- 

[439] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

dier was Yiddish. But I'm certain now that he 
was German and that he went back to the 
Vaterland after the war broke out and became 
the commander of a battery of five-inch guns 
on the old Luneville front. 



On the day before Decoration Day of this 
year of 1917 I was in a sea-port town on the 
northeastern coast of France which our people 
had taken over as a supply base. The general 
in command of our local forces said to me as 
we sat in his headquarters at dinner that even- 
ing: 

"I wish you'd get up early in the morning 
and go for a little ride with me out to the cem- 
etery. You'll be going back there later in the 
day, of course, for the services but I want you 
to see something that you probably won't be 
able to see after nine or ten o'clock." 

"What is it.?" I asked. 

"Never mind now," he answered. "To tell 
you in advance doesn't suit my purposes. But 
will you be ready to go with me in my car at 
seven o'clock.?" 

"Yes, sir. I will." 

I should say"' it was about half -past seven 
when we rode in at the gates of the cemetery 
and made for the section which, by consent of 
the French, had been set apart as a burial place 
for our people. For considerably more than a 
year now, dating from the time I write this 

[ 440 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

down, a good many thousands of Americans 
have been stationed in or near this port, and 
many, many times that number have passed 
through it. So quite naturally, though it is 
hundreds of miles from any of the past or pres- 
ent battle fronts, we have had numerous deaths 
there from accident or from disease or from 
other causes. 

We rounded a turn in the winding road and 
there before us stretched the graves of our 
dead boys, soldiers and sailors, marines and 
members of labor battalions; whites and blacks 
and yellow men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics, 
Protestants and Mohammedans — for there were 
four followers of the faith of Islam taking their 
last sleep here in this consecrated ground — row 
upon row of them, each marked, except in the 
case of the Mohammedans, by a plain white 
cross bearing in black letters the name, the age, 
the rank and the date of death of him who 
slept there at the foot of tjie cross. 

Just beyond the topmost line of crosses stood 
the temporary wooden platform dressed with 
bunting and flags, where an American admiral 
and an American brigadier, a group of French 
officers headed by a major-general, a distin- 
guished French civic official, and three chap- 
lains representing three creeds were to unite at 
noon in an hour of devotion and tribute to the 
memories of these three-hundred-and-odd men 
of ours who had made the greatest of all hu- 
man sacrffices. 

[441] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

But it was not the sight of the rows of graves 
and the lines of crosses nor the peculiar devices 
uprearing slantwise at head and foot of the 
graves of the four Musselmans nor yet the brave 
play of tri-coloured bunting upon the sides and 
front of the platform yonder which caught my 
attention. For at that hour the whole place 
was alive with the shapes of French people — 
mostly of women in black but with a fair sprin- 
kling of shapes of old men and of children 
among them. All these figures were busy at a 
certain task — and that task was the decorating 
of the graves of Americans. 

As we left the car to walk through the plot I 
found myself taking off my cap and I kept it 
off all the while I was there. For even before 
I had been told the full story of what went on 
there I knew I stood in the presence of a most 
high and holy thing and so I went bare-headed 
as I would in any sanctuary. 

We walked all through this God's acre of 
ours, the general and I. Some of the women 
who laboured therein were old and bent, some 
were young but all of them wore black gowns. 
Some plainly had been recruited from the well- 
to-do and the wealthy elements of the resident 
population; more though, were poor folk and 
many evidently were peasants who, one guess- 
ed, lived in villages or on farms near to the 
city. Here would be a grave that was heaped 
high with those designs of stiff, bright-hued im- 
mortelles which the French put upon the graves 

[442 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

of their own dead. Here would be a grave that 
was marked with wreaths of simple field flow- 
ers or with the great lovely white and pink 
roses which grow so luxuriantly on this coast. 
Here would be merely great sheaves of loose 
blossoms; there a grave upon which the flowers 
had been scattered broadcast, until the whole 
mound was covered with the fragrant dewy of- 
ferings; and there, again, I saw where fingers 
patently unaccustomed to such employment 
had fashioned the long-stemmed roses into 
wreaths and crosses and even into forms of 
shields. 

Grass grew rich and lush upon all the graves. 
White sea-shells marked the sides of them and 
edged the narrow gravelled walks. We came 
to where there were two newly made graves; 
their occupants had been buried there only a 
day or so before as one might tell by the marks 
in the trodden turf, but a carpeting of sods cut 
from a lawn somewhere had been so skillfully 
pieced together upon the mounds that the raw 
clods of clay beneath were quite covered up 
and hidden from sight, so that only the seams 
in the green coverlids distinguished these two 
graves from graves which were older than they 
by weeks or months. 

Alongside every grave, nearly, knelt a wom- 
an alone, or else a woman with children aiding 
her as she disposed her showing of flowers and 
wreaths to the best advantage. The old men 
were putting the paths in order, raking the 

[ 443] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

gravel down smoothly and straightening the 
borderings of shells. There were no soldiers 
among the men; all were civilians, and for the 
most part humble-appearing civilians, clad in 
shabby garments. But I marked two old gen- 
tlemen wearing the great black neckerchiefs 
and the flowing broadcloth coats of ceremonial 
days, who seemed as deeply intent as any in 
what to them must have been an unusual la- 
bour. Coming to each individual worker or 
each group of workers the general would halt 
and formally salute in answer to the gently 
murmured greetings which constantly marked 
our passage through the burying-ground. When 
we had made the rounds we sat down upon the 
edge of the flag-dressed platform and he pro- 
ceeded to explain what I already had begun to 
reason out for myself. Only, of course I did 
not know, until he told me, how it all had 
started. 

"It has been a good many months now," he 
said, "since we dug the first grave here. But 
on the day of the funeral a delegation of the 
most influential residents came to me to say 
the people of the town desired to adopt our 
dead. I asked just what exactly was meant by 
this and then the spokesman explained. 

"'General,' he said to me, 'there is scarcely 
a family in this place that has not given one or 
more of its members to die for France. In most 
cases these dead of ours sleep on battlefields 
far away from us, perhaps in unmarked, un- 

[444 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

known graves. This is true of all the parts of 
our country but particularly is it true of this 
town, which is so remote from the scenes of 
actual fighting. So in the case of this brave 
American who is to-day to be buried here among 
us, we ask that a French family be permitted 
formally to undertake the care of his grave, 
exactly as though it were the grave of their own 
flesh-and-blood who fell as this American has 
fallen, for France and for freedom. In the case 
of each American who may hereafter be buried 
here we crave the same privilege. We promise 
you that for so long as these Americans shall 
rest here in our land, their graves will be as our 
graves and will be tended as we would tend the 
graves of our own sons. 

"'We desire that the name of each family 
thus adopting a grave may be registered, so 
that should the adults die, the children of the 
next generation as a sacred charge, may carry 
on the obligation which is now to be laid upon 
their parents and which is to be transmitted 
down as a legacy to all who bear their name. 
We would make sure that no matter how long 
your fallen braves rest in the soil of France, 
their graves will not be neglected or forgotten. 

"'We wish to do this thing for more reasons 
than one: We wish to do it because thereby 
we may express in our own poor way the grati- 
tude we feel for America. We wish to do it 
because of the thought that some stricken 
mother across the seas in America will perhaps 
[445 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

feel a measure of consolation in knowing that 
the grave of her boy will always be made beau- 
tiful by the hands of a Frenchwoman whose 
home, also, has been desolated. And finally we 
wish to do it because we know it will bring 
peace to the hearts of our French women to 
feel they have a right to put French flowers 
upon the graves of your dead since they can 
never hope, most of them, to be able to per- 
form that same office for their heroic dead.'" 

The general stopped and cleared his voice 
which had grown a bit husky. Then he re- 
sumed: 

"So that was how the thing came about, and 
that explains what you see here now. You see, 
the French have no day which exactly corre- 
sponds in its spiritual significance to our Deco- 
ration Day and our Memorial Day. All Souls' 
Day, which is religious, rather than patriotic in 
its purport, is their nearest approach to it. But 
weeks ago, before the services contemplated for 
to-day were even announced, the word some- 
how spread among the townspeople. To my 
own knowledge some of these poor women have 
been denying themselves the actual necessities 
of life in order to be able to make as fine a 
showing for the graves which they have adopt- 
ed as any of the wealthier sponsors could make. 

"Don't think, though, that these graves are 
not well kept at all times. Any day, at any 
hour, you can come here and you will find any- 
where from ten to fifty women down on their 

[446] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

knees smoothing the turf and freshening the 
flowers which they constantly keep upon the 
graves. But I knew that at dayhght this morn- 
ing all or nearly all of them would be here do- 
ing their work before the crowds began to ar- 
rive for the services, and I wanted you to see 
them at it, in the hope that you might write 
something about the sight for our people at 
home to read. If it helps them better to under- 
stand what is in the hearts of the French you 
and I may both count our time as having been 
well spent." 

He stood up looking across the cemetery, all 
bathed and burnished as it was in the soft rich 
sunshine. 

"God," he said under his breath, "how I am 
learning to love these people!" 

So I have here set down the tale and to it I 
have to add a sequel. Decoration Day was 
months ago and now I learn that the custom 
which originated in this coast town is spread- 
ing through the country; that in many villages 
and towns where Americans are buried, French 
women whose sons or husbands or fathers or 
brothers have been killed, are taking over the 
care of the graves of the Americans, bestowing 
upon them the same loving offices which they 
would visit, if they could, upon the graves of 
their own men-folk. 



It was one of those days which will live al- 

[447] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

ways in my memory — my feet wouldn't let me 
forget it even if my brain wanted to — when I 
had to walk to keep up. The available forces 
offered by Pershing to the French and British 
at the time of the great spring push of the Ger- 
mans were moving up across Picardy. I, as 
one of the correspondents assigned each to a 
separate regiment, had set out at dawn to foot 
it for fifteen miles across country at the tail of 
the headquarters company. This happened to 
be a day, of which there were several, when 
neither a side-car, a riding-horse, or a seat in 
an ambulance or a baggage-wagon was avail- 
able, and when the colonel's automobile was so 
crowded with the colonel and his driver and his 
adjutant and his French liaison officer and all 
their baggage, there was no room in it for me. 
That painful period of my martial adventures 
has elsewhere in these writings been described 
at greater or less length. 

I was hoofing it over the flinty highway, try- 
ing to favour my blisters, when I heard a hail 
behind me. I turned around and there was an 
angel from Heaven, temporarily disguised as a 
Y. M. C. A. worker, sitting at the wheel of a 
big auto-truck with the sign of the red triangle 
on its sides. 

"Could you use a little ride.?^" he inquired, 
grinning through the dust clouds as he drew up 
alongside and halted. 

Could I use a little ride! For fear he might 
change his mind or something, I boarded him 
[448] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

over a front wheel before I began expressing 
my eternal gratitude. 

This ceremony being over, he told me who 
he was, and I told him who I was, and after 
that we became friends for life. He was a 
minister from a city in southern California but 
he didn't look it now, what with a four-days' 
growth of stubbly red whiskers on his weather- 
beaten chops and grease spots on his service 
uniform. He had given up a good salary and 
he had left behind him a wife and three chil- 
dren — I am sure about the wife and I'm pretty 
sure there were three children, or two anyhow 
— to come over here and at the age of forty- 
four or thereabouts to run a perambulating 
canteen for the boys. There are a lot more like 
him in France, serving with the "Y" or the 
K. of C.'s or the Salvation Army or the Red 
Cross and as a rule they assay about nineteen- 
hundred and ninety-nine pounds of true gold to 
the ton. 

"Willing to earn your passage, ain't you.f*" 
he inquired when the introductions were con- 
cluded. "Well then, climb into the back of 
my bus and stand by to get busy, heaving out 
the cargo." 

I looked then and saw his truck was loaded 
to the gunwales with boxes of California 
oranges. 

"What the ?" I began, in surprise. 

"Go on and say it,'Vhe urged. "Don't hang 
back just because I'm a parson by trade. 

[449] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

Trailing around with this man's army, I'm 
used to hearing cuss words. Quite a jag of 
freight, isn't it? Some good fellow out in my 
state shipped a train-load of oranges across 
with the request that they be distributed among 
the boys, free gratis for nothing, and it's my 
present job to catch up with this division and 
give part of the stuff away. I lit out from 
Paris before daylight this morning and here I 
am. But I can't steer this wagon and pass out 
the truck at the same time so if you'll go aft 
and do the Walter Johnson, I'll play Bobby 
Waltour here at this end and between us we 
can spread the light and keep right on moving 
at thje same time." 

Before we ran out of oranges, which was 
about three o'clock in the afternoon just as we 
rolled into the village where the headquarters 
company and the colonel and his staff — and in- 
cidentally I — were to be billeted for the night, 
I had a sore arm to keep company with my 
sore feet. All day this had been our procedure: 
As we ranged up behind a column of marching 
troops my new pal, the red-haired dominie, 
would yell out "Who wants a nice, juicy 
orange, fellows.?" and then as we rolled on by 
I would fling out the fruit, trying to make sure 
that every man got one orange and that no 
man got more than one. 

I threw oranges to men afoot, to men on 
wagons and on guns, to men and officers on 
horseback and to menXperched upon_ambu- 

l[ 450 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

lances and wagons. My throwing was faulty 
but the catching approximated perfection. An 
arm would fly up and the flying orange would 
find a home in the deftly cupped palm of the 
hand at the far end of the arm. The news 
travelled ahead of us, somehow, and whole com- 
panies would be lined up as we arrived, to get 
their share. 

A few minutes before the finish of the trip 
came, we caught up with a couple of French 
battalions. Neither of us remembered the 
French word for orange, but that made no dif- 
ference. His whoop of announcement and my 
first fling in the direction of a trudging Poilu, 
were as signals to all the rest and up went their 
paws. Their intentions were good, but I don't 
think I ever in all my life witnessed such a dis- 
play of miscellaneous muflSng, and I used to see 
some pretty raw fielding back at Paducah in 
the days of the old Kitty League. As the scor- 
ers would say, there was an error for nearly 
every chance. Among the Americans not one 
orange in ten had been dropped; among the 
Frenchmen not one in ten was safely held. 

"Get the answer, don't you.^*" inquired the 
preacher-driver as we left the trudging French- 
men behind and hurried ahead to connect with 
a khaki-clad outfit just defiling out of a cross- 
way into the main road a quarter of a mile 
ahead of us. 

"Sure," I answered, "the Yanks make traps 
of their paws but the Frenchmen make baskets 

[451] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

of theirs. The orange stays in the trap but it 
rolls out of a butter-fingered basket." 

"Yes," he said, "but the real cause goes 
deeper down than that. Baseball — that's the 
answer. Probably every American in France 
played baseball when he was a kid, or else he 
still plays it. No Frenchman ever knew any- 
thing about baseball until we came over here 
last year and introduced it into the country. 
The average Frenchman looks on a sporting 
event as a spectacle, but the average American, 
at some time or other in his life, has been an 
active participant in his national sport and the 
lessons we learn as children we never entirely 
forget even though lack of practice may make 
us rusty." 

Which, of course, was quite true. Likewise, 
I think it is the underlying reason for the fact 
that our boys are the best hand-grenade tossers 
among the Allies. 



We certainly are creatures of habit. Be- 
cause somebody, a century or so behind us, 
speaking with that air of authority which usu- 
ally accompanies the voicing of a perfectly 
wrong premise, stated that all Irishmen were 
natural wits and that no Englishman could see 
a joke, the world accepted the assertion as a 
verity. Never was a greater libel perpetrated 
upon either race. It has been my observation 
that the Irish at heart are a melancholy breed. 

[452] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

Certain it is that no people have produced more 
first-rate humourists and more first-rate come- 
dians than the EngHsh. Witness the British 
output of humour in this war; witness Bairns- 
father and those satirical verses on war topics 
that have been running in Punch lately. I'm 
mostly Celt myself — ^North of Scotland and 
South of Ireland, with some Welsh and a little 
English mixed up in my strain — and I feel my- 
self qualified to speak on these matters. 

Another common delusion among outsiders 
and particularly among Americans is that Eng- 
lishmen are stolid unimaginative creatures who 
fail to show their feelings in moments of stress 
because they haven't any great flow of feelings 
to show. Now, as a general proposition, I think 
it may be figured that a Frenchman on becom- 
ing sentimental will give free vent to the 
thoughts that are in his heart; that an Ameri- 
can will try to hide his emotions under a mask 
of levity and that an Englishman, expressing 
after a somewhat different pattern the racial 
embarrassment which he shares with the Amer- 
ican, will seek to appear outwardly indifferent, 
incidentally becoming more or less inarticulate. 
The Frenchman takes no shame to himself that 
he weeps or sings in public; the Yankee is apt 
to laugh very loudly; the Englishman will be 
mute and will exhibit slight confusion which by 
some might be mistaken for mental awkward- 
ness. But there are exceptions to all rules. In 
so far as the rule pertains to the Britisher, I 
[453] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

am thinking of two exceptions. To one of 
these instances I was an eye-witness; the other 
incident was told to me by a man who had 
been present when it occurred. He said he was 
passing through Charing Cross station one 
night when he saw two Canadian subalterns 
emerging from one of the refreshment booths. 
Both of them had been wounded. One had his 
right arm in a sling and limped as he walked. 
The other was that most pitiable spectacle 
which this war can offer — a young man blinded. 
Across his eyes was drawn a white cloth band 
and he moved with the uncertain fumbling gait 
of one upon whom this affliction has newly 
come. With his uninjured arm the lame youth 
was steering his companion. The two boys — 
for they were only boys, my informant said — 
halted in an arched exitway to put on their 
top-coats before stepping out into the drizzle. 
The crippled officer released his hold upon his 
friend's elbow to shrug his own garment up 
upon his shoulders. The second hless^ was 
making a sorry job at finding the armholes of 
his coat, when an elderly officer with the badges 
of a major-general upon his shoulders and a 
breast loaded with decorations, stepped up and 
with the words, "Let me help you, please," 
held the coat in the proper position while deft- 
ly he guided the blind boy's limbs into the 
sleeve openings. 

All in a second the unexpected denouement 
came. The youngster reached in his pocket, 

[454 ] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

then felt for the hand of his volunteer who had 
come to his assistance. "Thank you very 
much," he said. And there in the palm of the 
astonished general lay a shilling. 

The other lieutenant hobbled to his com- 
rade's side. He may have meant to whisper, 
but in his distress he fairly shouted it out: 
"You've just handed a tip to a major-general!" 

Horrified, the blind boy spun about on his 
heels to apologise. 

"I'm so sorry, sir," he gasped. "I — I 
thought it was a porter, of course. I beg your 
pardon, a thousand times, sir. I hope you'll for- 
give me — you know, I can't see any more, 
sir." And with that he held out his hand to 
take back the miserable coin. 

The splendid-looking old man put both his 
hands upon the lad's shoulders. His ruddy 
face was quivering and the tears were running 
down his cheeks. 

"Please don't, please don't," he gulped, al- 
most incoherently. "I want to keep your shil- 
ling, if you don't mind. Why God bless you, 
my boy, I want to keep it always. I wouldn't 
take a thousand pounds for it." 

And then falling back one pace he saluted 
the lad with all the reverence he would have 
accorded his commander-in-chief or his king. 

Here is the other thing, the one of which I 
speak as having first-hand knowledge. Three 
of us, returning by automobile from a visit to 
the Verdun massif, took a detour in order to 

[455 ] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

call upon our friends the blithe young British- 
ers who made up Night Bombing Squadron No. 

. They were a great outfit, representing 

as they did, every corner of the Empire; but 
the pick of the lot, to my way of thinking, were 
Big Bill and the Young-'Un, both captains and 
both seasoned pilots of big Handley-Page bomb- 
ing planes. As I think I have remarked some-i 
where else in these pages, the average age of 
this crowd was somewhere around twenty-two. 

This fine spring night we arrived at their 
headquarters opportunely for there was to be a 
raiding expedition to the Rhine Valley. First 
though, there was a good dinner at which we 
were unexpected but nonetheless welcome 
guests. Catch a lot of English lads letting a 
little thing like the prospect of a four hundred 
mile air jaunt into Germany and back inter- 
fere with their dinner. 

Just before the long, lazy twilight greyed 
away, to be succeeded by the silver radiance of 
the moonlight, all hands started for the han- 
gars a mile or two away across on the other 
side of the patch of woods which surrounded 
the camp. Upon the running-boards of our car 
we carried an overflow of six or eight airmen; 
the rest walked. Clinging alongside me where 
I rode in the front seat, was a tall, slender boy 
— a captain for all his youth — whom I shall call 
Wilkins, which wasn't his name but is near 
enough to it. He was the minstrel of the squad- 
ron; could play on half a dozen instruments, in- 

[456] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

eluding the piano, and sing Cockney ballads 
with a lovely nasal whine. 

At the field our added passengers dropped off 
and each ran to superintend the soldier crews 
as they went over the planes, tuning them up. 
After a little while the signal for departure 
came. One after another thirteen machines got 
away, each bearing its pilot and its gunner-ob- 
server and with its freight of great bombs dan- 
gling from its undersides as it rose and went 
soaring away toward the northeast, making a 
wonderful picture, if in rising, it chanced to 
cut across the white white disk of a splendid 
full moon which had just pushed itself clear of 
the wooded mountainside. 

Next day about noon-time our route again 
brought us within ten miles of the squadron's 
camp and we decided to turn aside that way 
for an hour or so and learn the results of the 
raid. Sprawled about the big living-room of 
their community house in the birch forest, we 
found a score or more of our late hosts. 

"Well, what sort of a show did you put on 
last night.f^" one of us inquired as we entered. 

"Oh, a priceless show," came the answer 
from one. "We gave the dear old Boche a 
sultry evenin' and make no ruddy error about 
it. Spilt our little pills all over Mannheim and 
Treves. Scored a lot of direct hits too, as well 
as one might judge while comin' away in more 
or less of a hurry." 

"It was rippin' fun while it lasted," put in 

[457] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

another. "We didn't get back though until 
nearly four o'clock this mornin'. It left me feel- 
in' rather seedy — I must have my beauty sleep 
or I'm no good for the whole day." Behind his 
hand he yawned. 

Now ordinarily, the next question would 
have been framed with a view to finding out 
whether all the bombers had safely returned; 
but the airman's code of ethics forbade. It 
was perfectly proper to inquire regarding the 
effects of a raid into hostile territory but the 
outsider must refrain from seeking information 
regarding any losses on the part of the raiders 
until one of them volunteered the news of his 
own accord. 

But there was no rule against our silently 
counting noses and this we did, industriously. 
As nearly as I could make out there were, of 
those whom we knew had participated in the 
expedition, five or six missing from the assem- 
bled company; but then of course the absentees 
might be asleep in their quarters. 

It struck the three of us, and in my own 
case I know the impression deepened as the 
minutes passed, that for all their kindly hospi- 
tality and all their solicitude that we should 
feel at home, there was a common depression 
prevalent among them. Some, we thought be- 
trayed their feelings by a silence not habitual 
among these high-spirited youths. Some 
seemed abstracted and some just a trifle irri- 
table. And when this one or that described the 
[458] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

bombing of the enemy towns which had been 
their particular targets I was sure I detected 
something forced about the enthusiasm he out 
into his speech. 

Presently there befell one of those awkward 
little silences which inevitably occur in any 
gathering where the spirit of things is a bit 
forced and strained. It was broken by a lanky 
twenty-year-old flyer. 

*'Hm — " he began, clearing his throat and 
striving to make his tone casual, "you know, 
Wilkins and his observer didn't get back." 

That was all — no details of how his two 
mates had gone rocketing down somewhere be- 
hind the German lines probably to instant 
death. In these few words he stated the bald 
fact of it and then he looked away, suddenly 
and unduly interested in the movements of 
somebody passing by one of the open win- 
dows. 

On my right hand sat that winning little 
chap whom his mates called the Young-'Un. 
The Young-'Un was lighting a pipe. 

"Beastly annoyia'," he grunted between 
puffs at the stem of his briar-root, "losin' Wil- 
kins. As a matter of fact he was the only de- 
cent pianist we had. Rotten luck and all that 
sort of thing to lose our pianist, eh what.?^" 

Coming from the Young-'Un, with his gentle 
smile and his soft whimsical drawl, the last re- 
mark seemed so utterly unsympathetic, so cal- 
lous, so cold-blooded, that the shock of what 
[459] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

he said left me mute. It left my two compan- 
ions mute, too. 

I turned in my chair and looked at the 
Young-'Un. He seemed to have trouble getting 
his pipe going. His two hands were cupped 
over the bowl, making a mask for his face. By 
reason of his hands I could not see much of his 
face but I could see this much — that his chin 
was trembling, that the big muscles in his 
throat were twitching and jumping and that 
though he winked his eyes as fast as he could, 
he couldn't wink fast enough to keep the big 
tears from leaking out and running down his 
cheeks. 

Because he was an experienced airman it was a 
part of his professional code to make no pother 
over the loss of a fellow-flier by the hazard of 
chance which every one of them dared as a 
part of his daily life. Because he was an Eng- 
lishman, he felt shame that he should show any 
emotion. But because his heart was broken he 
cried behind the cover of his hands. 



Shells and bombs are forever doing freakish 
things. The effects of their tantrums set one 
to thinking of the conduct of cyclones and 
earthquakes. For example: 

In Bar-le-Duc, which most Americans used 

to think of, not as a city but as a kind of jelly, 

I saw when we passed through there the other 

day, where a bomb dropped by a German air- 

[460] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

raider did a curious bit of damage. I reckon 
people who believe in omens and portents would 
call it significant. Just off the railroad station 
in a little paved square stands a monument 
put up by popular subscription to the men of 
this town who died for their country in 1870- 
71. Upon one face of the granite shaft, being 
the one which looks inward toward the town, 
are two bronze figures of heroic size. The low- 
ermost figure is that of a dying boy-soldier, 
with one hand pressed to his breast and the 
other holding fast to his musket. The other 
figure — that of a winged angel typifying the 
spirit of France — is hovering above him with 
a| palm branch extended over his drooping 
head. 

The bomb, descending from on high, must 
have grazed the face of the monument. A 
great hole in the pavement shows where it ex- 
ploded. One flying fragment sheared away the 
fingers and thumbs of the dying soldier's hand 
so that the bronze musket was torn out of his 
grasp and flung upon the earth. Some one 
picked up the musket and laid it at the base of 
the marble but the hand sticks out into space 
empty and mutilated. 

I dare say a German might interpret this as 
meaning France would be left crippled, dis- 
armed and mangled. But to me I read it as a 
sign to show that France, the conqueror, and 
not the conquered, will be one of the nations 
that are to take the lead in bringing about uni- 
[461] 



THE GLORY OF THE COMING 

versal peace and universal disarmament, once 
Germany has been cmigd of what ails her. 



I saw them when they first landed at Camp 
Upton — furtive, frightened, slew-footed, slack- 
shouldered, underfed, apprehensive — a huddle 
of unhappy aliens speaking in alien tongues; 
knowing little of the cause for which they must 
fight and possibly caring less. 

I saw them again three months later when 
the snow of the dreadful winter of 1917-18 was 
piling high about their wooden barracks down 
there on wind-swept Long Island. The stoop 
was beginning to come out of their spines, the 
shamble out of their gait. They had learned to 
hold their heads up, had learned to look every 
man in the eye and tell him to go elsewhere 
with a capital H. They knew now that disci- 
pline was not punishment and that the salute 
was not a mark of servility but an evidence of 
mutual self-respect as between officer and man. 
They wore their uniforms with pride. The flag 
meant something to them and the war meant 
something to them. Three short hard months 
of training had transformed them from a rab- 
ble into soldier-stuff; from a street-mob into 
the makings of an armv; from strangers into 
Americans. 

After nine months I have seen them once 
more in France. For swagger, for snap, for 
smartness in the drill and for cockiness in the 
[462] 



FROM MY OVERSEAS NOTE-BOOK 

billet; for good humour on the march and for 
dash and spunk and deviltry in the fighting 
into which just now they have been sent, our 
army can show no better soldiers and no more 
gallant spirits than the lads who mainly make 
up the rank and file of this particular division. 

They are the foreign-born Jews and Italians 
and Slavs of New York's East Side, that were 
called up for service in the first draft. 

No wonder the mother who didn't raise her 
boy to be a soldier has become an extinct spe- 
cies back home. 



[463]' 



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